I 

U*M§1 


HHHUI1MJUUNUUUH1UI 


^ 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORN1 
AT    LOS  ANGELES 


18  9  8         «( 


HUNTERS  OF  THE 
GREAT  NORTH 


BY 

VILHJALMUR  STEFANSSON 


WITH   ILLUSTRATIONS 


»  '  >  ■      < 
- 


IB 


NEW  YORK 

HARCOURT,  BRACE  AND  COMPANY 

56987 


COPYRIGHT,   1922,  BY 
HARCOURT,   BRACE  AND  COMPANY,   INC. 


4      .  .- 


• 


•  •.»••   •  •  : .  •  .. 

.  • .     • .  .•  •  •  •  • 


"INTID    IN    TM«    U     ■     A.    BY 

TMI     OUINN     ft     nODKN     COMPANY 

RAHWAY,     N       J 


PREFACE 

When  first  you  leave  home  to  travel  in  a  foreign  land 
you  receive  impressions  more  vivid  than  those  of  any 
later  journey  to  the  same  country.    If  you  at  once  rush 
your  views  and  observations  into  print  you  are  likely  to 
J    have  an  interesting  book  but  not  so  likely  an  accurate 
k  one.    You  will  probably  regret  some  parts  of  that  book 
on  grounds  of  mere  regard  for  truth,  for  you  will  see 
later  that  you  erred  both  in  observations  and  conclusions. 
When  first  I  went  to  the  polar  regions  I  came  back  at 
the  end  of  a  year  and  a  half  full  of  enthusiasm  for  the 
'■    Arctic  and  for  the  Eskimos.     Luckily  that  enthusiasm 
~f  was  translated  into  the  organization  of  a  second  expedi- 
tion that  left  for  the  North  in  seven  months,  and  not 
into  a  book  to  be  published  then.    As  I  look  over  my 
diaries  of  that  time  I  shudder  to  think  how  vastly  I 
might  have  augmented  the  already  great  misknowledge 
of  the  Arctic  had  I  published  everything  I  imagined  I 
had  seen  and  everything  I  thought  I  knew. 

At  the  end  of  my  second  expedition,  after  five  winters 
and  seven  summers  in  the  North,  I  published  "My  Life 
With  the  Eskimo"  (New  York  and  London,  1913).  So 
far  I  have  discovered  (with  the  help  of  critics  and 
through  careful  re-reading)  a  half  dozen  errors  in  that 
volume.  Some  of  these  have  been  eliminated  as  the  book 
has  been  reprinted;  the  rest  will  be  rectified  in  the  next 
print 'ng. 

At  the  end  of  my  third  expedition,  with  a  background 
of  ten  northern  winters  and  thirteen  summers,  I  wrote 

Hi 


iv  PREFACE 

"The  Friendly  Arctic"  (New  York  and  London,  192 1). 
A  comparison  of  that  book  with  the  earlier  one  will  bring 
out  few  serious  contradictions  of  fact  (I  hope  none), 
although  it  will  show  a  changed  point  of  view — but  only, 
I  think,  in  line  with  a  logical  development  founded  on 
better  understanding. 

In  the  present  book  I  have  tried  by  means  of  diaries 
and  memory  to  go  back  to  the  vivid  impressions  of  my 
first  year  among  the  Eskimos  for  the  story  of  what  I 
saw  and  heard.  I  have  tried  to  tell  the  story  as 
I  would  have  told  it  then,  except  that  the  mature  knowl- 
edge of  ten  succeeding  years  has  been  used  to  eliminate 
early  faults  of  observation  and  conclusion.  A  good  many 
interesting  stories  found  in  the  diaries  of  my  first  arctic 
voyage  do  not  appear  in  this  book  because  I  now  know 
them  to  have  been  based  on  misapprehensions.  In  a 
sense,  the  book  is  therefore  less  interesting  than  if  I  had 
published  it  fourteen  years  ago — but  less  interesting  only 
to  the  extent  in  which  it  is  more  true. 

The  scientific  collections  made  on  the  expedition 
described  in  this  book  are  now  in  the  Peabody  Museum 
of  Harvard  University  and  in  the  Royal  Ontario  Museum 
of  the  University  of  Toronto,  for  those  institutions  joined 
in  meeting  the  expense  of  my  journey  down  the  Mac- 
kenzie. The  photographs  in  this  volume  are  used  by 
permission  of  the  Peabody  Museum,  the  American 
Museum  of  Natural  History  of  New  York,  and  the  De- 
partments of  the  Naval  Service,  Mines,  and  Colonization 
of  Canada.  Single  pictures  were  furnished  by  personal 
friends  of  the  author— Harry  Anthony,  Hawthrrne 
Daniel  and  E.  M.  Kindle. 

/ 
( 


CONTENTS 


PACE 


Preparations  for  a  Lifework  of  Exploration  .       .         i 
Down  the  Mackenzie  River  Through  2,000  Miles 
of  Indian  Country n 

First  Impressions  of  the  Eskimos       .       .       .       .  37 

Captain  Klinkenberg — Sea  Wolf  and  Discoverer  .  47 

The  Whaling  Fleet  Sails  Away 57 

Learning  to  Live  as  an  Eskimo — On  a  Diet  of  Fish 

Without  Salt 64 

How  an  Eskimo  Sailed  Through  the  Storm       .        .  78 

An  Autumn  Journey  Through  Arctic  Mountains  .  88 
The  Sun  Goes  Away  for  the  Winter  .       .       .       .100 

Lost  in  the  Mackenzie  Delta 107 

An  Arctic  Christmas  with  an  English  Country 

Gentleman  120 

The  Life  at  Tuktuyaktok 133 

Learning  to  Build  a  Snowhouse  and  to  Be  Com- 
fortable in  One 150 

Travels  After  the  Sun  Came  Back      .        .       .  .162 

We  Go  in  Search  of  Our  Own  Expedition       .  -173 

A  Spring  Journey  in  an  Eskimo  Skin  Boat       .  .     igo 

A  Race  over  the  Arctic  Mountains  in  Summer  .     205 

On  a  Raft  down  the  Porcupine  River       .       .  .220 

How  I  Learned  to  Hunt  Caribou        .       .       .  .243 

How  I  Learned  to  Hunt  Seals 261 

How  We  Hunt  Polar  Bears 282 

v 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

Frontispiece 

FACING  PAGE 

The  Smith  Rapids 28 

Str.  Mackenzie  River  Below  Smith  Rapids 28 

Conservative  Old  Man  Wearing  Labrets 40 

An  Up-to-Date  Young  Man 40 

Tending  Fish  Nets  by  Kayak 54 

Klinkenberg  and  His  Family 54 

The  Village  and  Harbor  of  Herschel  Island  ....  60 

Cabins  of  White  Trappers,  Mackenzie  Delta   ....  60 

A  Fishing  Camp — Sun-drying  the  Fish 74 

A  Summer  Camp  Near  Arctic  Mountains 74 

Roxy  and  His  Wife 86 

Winter    Travel — Arctic    Mountains    South    of    Herschel 

Island           96 

Repairing  a  Broken  Sled  While  the  Dogs  Lie  Comfot.tably 

Stretched  Out  Enjoying  the  Winter  Sunshinf       .       .118 
Eskimo  Log  Cache  to  Protect  Meat  from  Preda' ory  Ani- 
mals        130 

Building  a  Snowhouse 158 

Campmaking  in  Winter             •„ 158 

Breaking   Camp 170 

Sea  Ice  Piled  Against  the  Coast  in  Winter     ....  170 

The'  Break-Up  of  the  Sea  Ice  in  Spring 196 

An  Umiak  and  Crew — North  Coast  of  Alaska        .       .       .  196 

We  Sailed  up  the  Mackenzie  Delta  to  Macpherson      .       .  208 

Porcupine  River  in  Early  Spring 208 

Autumn  Camp  of  Caribou  Hunters  a  Hundred  Miles  North 

of  the  Arctic  Circle — Sun-drying  Meat  and  Skins     .  244 

Bringing  Home  a  Seal ,              ...  26,-2 

A  Woman  Fishing  Through  the  Ice 262 

MAPS 302 


vn 


HUNTERS    OF   THE 
GREAT  NORTH 

CHAPTER  I 

PREPARATIONS   FOR  A   LTFEWORK   OF   EXPLORATION 

My  family  were  pioneers.  In  advance  of  the  great 
railways  that  eventually  came  to  cross  the  northwestern 
prairies,  they  traveled  by  primitive  contrivance  from 
the  west  end  of  Lake  Superior  across  to  the  Red  River 
of  the  North  and  down  that  river  to  Lake  Winnipeg. 
Before  them  had  been  the  trappers,  the  traders  and 
missionaries;  but  they  were  among  the  earliest  of  the 
farmer  colonists  who  in  1876  settled  and  began  the  proc- 
ess of  transforming  the  pathless  and  romantic  wilderness 
into  the  rich  but  commonplace  agricultural  community 
of  to-day. 

Those  were  days  of  stern  trial.  The  Indians  were 
friendly  and  to  an  extent  helpful,  but  the  settlers  mis- 
understood and  mistrusted  them. 

After  two  years  of  unremitting  toil,  our  family  found 
themselves  in  possession  of  a  comfortable  log  cabin  and 
the  clearing  of  the  forest  had  well  begun,  when  there  came 
a  flood  that  drowned  some  of  the  cattle,  carried  away 
our  haystacks  and  those  of  our  neighbors,  and  left  be- 
hind it  destitution,  which  towards  spring  turned  into  fam- 
ine. A  brother  and  sister  of  my  own  are  said  to  have 
died  of  malnutrition  and  some  of  our  neighbors  died  of 


2  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

actual  hunger.  The  terrors  of  smallpox  epidemic  were 
added,  for  epidemics  and  famines  commonly  go  together. 

It  was  partly  these  difficulties  and  tragedies  and  partly 
the  pioneer  spirit  which  leads  ever  farther  and  farther 
afield  that  took  our  family  from  the  woods  of  Manitoba 
out  upon  the  prairies  of  Dakota.  I  had  been  born  in  1879 
just  before  the  flood  and  was  less  than  two  years  old 
when  we  crossed  the  frontier  into  the  United  States. 

For  some  ten  years  I  grew  up  on  a  Dakota  farm  and 
walked  two  or  three  miles  in  winter  to  the  little  country 
school  which  in  those  days  was  in  session  only  a  small 
part  of  the  year.  However,  there  were  several  schools 
in  different  directions  from  our  farm  and  it  was  some- 
times possible  for  me,  when  one  school  closed,  to  get  in 
a  few  extra  weeks  at  a  second  school  when  their  terms 
did  not  happen  to  coincide. 

After  the  death  of  my  father  we  sold  the  farm  and  I 
became  for  four  years  a  cowboy  on  the  "wild  land,"  as 
we  then  called  the  prairies  that  had  not  yet  been  home- 
steaded.  Our  nearest  neighbors  were  ten  or  fifteen  miles 
away  in  various  directions  between  northeast  and  south- 
east, but  to  the  west  I  never  knew  how  far  our  nearest 
neighbors  were.  It  may  have  been  a  hundred  or  two 
hundred  miles. 

In  boyhood  I  read  by  the  dozen  stories  of  cowboys 
and  frontier  life,  and  the  open  prairie  was  to  me  a  land 
of  romance.  The  buffaloes  were  just  disappearing,  but 
their  whitening  bones  lay  everywhere  and  their  deep 
trails  wound  like  endless  serpents  over  hill  and  valley. 
Sitting  Bull  and  his  Indians  were  near  enough  and  power- 
ful enough  so  that  the  more  sober  of  us  feared  him  and 
the  more  romantic  hoped  that  his  war  parties  might  some 
day  come  over  the  line  of  the  horizon.    In  my  imagina- 


PREPARATIONS  3 

tion  I  could  see  myself  as  a  brave  scout  upon  whom  the 
lives  of  the  settlement  depended,  watching  from  afar  the 
camp  fires  of  the  Indians.  But  one  day  we  heard  that 
Sitting  Bull  had  been  shot  and  that  the  ghost  dances 
were  over. 

Although  the  buffalo  was  gone,  Buffalo  Bill  was  still 
with  us.  I  never  saw  him  but  my  elder  brother,  Joe, 
wore  a  sombrero  and  long  hair  down  his  back  in  the  best 
frontier  style  and  looked  much  like  him.  A  number  of 
the  cowboys  I  worked  with  had  known  him  in  the  early 
days  before  he  started  out  with  his  Wild  West  show. 
Most  of  them  let  on  they  could  shoot  better  and  ride 
better  than  Buffalo  Bill.  Modesty  is  not  a  special  virtue 
of  the  frontier  nor  are  jealousies  unknown. 

In  another  corner  of  our  territory  was  Roosevelt,  gath- 
ering on  the  open  prairie  through  his  contact  with  pio- 
neers some  of  the  breadth  and  freedom  and  vision  that 
characterized  him  later.  We  did  not  even  know  he  was 
there,  for  in  our  part  of  the  country  telegraphs  and  tele- 
phones were  still  in  the  future  and  the  stray  copies  of 
newspapers  we  saw  were  frequently  six  months  old.  His 
fame  did  not  spread  to  our  section  until  it  began  to  spread 
over  the  whole  world.    That  was  after  my  cowboy  days. 

My  first  ambition,  so  far  as  I  remember,  was  to  be 
Buffalo  Bill  and  to  kill  Indians.  That  was  while  I  was 
still  a  small  boy  on  the  farm.  When  I  became  a  cowboy 
and  began  to  dress  like  Buffalo  Bill  and  to  put  on  my  re- 
volver in  the  morning  as  I  would  an  article  of  clothing, 
my  ambition  shifted  and  my  ideal  became  Robinson  Cru- 
soe. That  is  an  ambition  that  never  left  me.  Twenty 
years  later  when  I  discovered  lands  and  stepped  ashore 
on  islands  where  human  foot  had  never  trod,  I  had  in 
reality   very  much  the   thrills   of  my  boyhood   imagi- 


4  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

nation  when  I  dreamed  of  being  a  castaway  on  my  own 
island  or  of  visiting  Crusoe  on  his. 

At  this  time  there  were  no  indications  that  I  was  to 
be  led  eventually  into  the  career  of  polar  exploration. 
But  unconsciously  I  was  getting  the  best  preparation  for 
it.  On  the  frontier  farm  I  had  hunted  rabbits  and  grouse 
in  the  winter,  ducks  and  geese  and  swans  and  cranes  in 
the  spring  and  fall.  After  I  became  a  cowboy  I  pursued 
on  horseback  the  white  tail  antelope.  I  can  scarcely  re- 
member the  time  when  I  did  not  hunt  with  a  shotgun, 
and  since  the  age  of  ten  I  have  been  a  fair  rifle  shot. 

But  more  valuable  than  anything  in  fitting  me  for  the 
life  of  a  hunter  in  the  polar  regions  was  my  buffeting  by 
the  Dakota  climate.  Dakota  in  summer  has  the  same 
terrific  heat  that  we  find  in  some  parts  of  the  arctic  prai- 
ries. The  Dakota  winter  is  not  as  long  as  the  arctic 
winter  but  it  is  occasionally  as  cold,  and  some  Dakota 
blizzards  are  as  bad  winter  weather  as  any  in  the  north- 
ern hemisphere.  I  hear  the  conditions  are  getting  a  little 
different  after  thirty  years  of  cultivation.  Farmhouses 
now  stand  half  a  mile  apart  where  the  cattle  ranches  once 
were  twenty  and  thirty  miles  apart,  and  trees  have  been 
planted  in  many  places  to  break  the  wind. 

Things  were  different  when  I  was  eighteen.  Four  of 
us  boys,  all  of  about  the  same  age,  had  started  a  ranch 
of  our  own.  We  had  picket!  out  a  conspicuous  hill  that 
looked  from  a  distance  like  the  double  hump  of  a  camel. 
Our  house  stood  on  one  hump  and  a  hundred  yards  away 
were  our  saddle  ponies  in  a  bam  on  the  other  hump. 
That  year  there  blew  up  the  day  before  Thanksgiving 
a  storm  which  is  still  called  by  the  pioneers  "the 
Thanksgiving  Blizzard."  The  weather  was  warm  and  the 
sky  gradually  became  overcast.     For  about  six  hours  the 


PREPARATIONS  5 

snowfiakes  fluttered  down  quietly,  getting  more  num- 
erous hour  by  hour  as  the  wind  gradually  increased. 

The  next  morning  it  was  a  howling  gale.  Wiser  men 
than  we  would  have  had  a  rope  or  smooth  wire  running 
from  our  house  door  to  the  barn  door  to  guide  us  through 
the  blizzard  so  we  could  have  fed  the  stock.  After  much 
discussion  as  to  whether  it  was  safe,  I  decided  that,  as 
we  knew  the  exact  directicn  of  the  wind  and  as  the  barn 
was  long  and  stood  broadside  to  the  house,  I  would  prob- 
ably be  able  to  find  it.  I  backed  out  of  the  door  into 
the  wind,  holding  my  mittened  hands  over  my  face,  for 
otherwise  the  wind  takes  your  breath  away.  The  pro- 
tection from  my  hands  kept  my  eyes  from  being  filled 
with  the  snow  as  I  worked  my  way  to  the  barn.  But 
the  barn  door  was  in  the  lee  of  the  building  and  a  great 
snowdrift  had  been  piled  up  against  it.  Although  I  knew 
where  the  door  was  I  found  no  sign  of  it,  and  I  real- 
ized that  if  I  dug  down  towards  it  with  a  shovel  the  drift- 
ing snow  would  fill  the  hole  faster  than  I  could  dig  it. 
Furthermore,  I  could  not  find  the  shovel  which  had  been 
buried  by  the  snow.  I  considered  breaking  my  way  into 
the  barn  through  the  roof,  but  decided  that  even  if  I 
made  the  needed  aperture,  I  would  not  be  able  to  carry 
hay  from  the  stack  to  the  barn.  So  I  gave  up  and  re- 
turned to  the  house. 

We  did  not  think  much  of  this  adventure  at  the  time, 
but  I  now  consider  it  one  of  the  most  foolhardy  enter- 
prises of  a  career  that  has  been  in  considerable  part  de- 
voted to  similar  things.  When  we  got  to  the  settlement 
months  later,  we  heard  of  some  twenty  or  thirty  tragedies 
that  had  resulted  from  this  gale.  Some  farmers  had  gone 
out  in  search  of  their  barns,  had  never  found  them  and 
had  been  frozen  to  death.     Others  found  their  barns 


6  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

and  stayed  there  until  the  gale  was  over,  not  daring  to 
return  to  the  house.  Still  others  found  their  barns,  fed 
their  stock,  and  lost  their  lives  on  the  way  back  to  the 
house.  There  were  also  stories  of  lightly  built  farm 
shanties  that  had  been  blown  away  by  the  wind,  exposing 
the  occupants  to  the  blizzard  or  killing  them  in  the  wreck. 

At  that  time  I  agreed  with  all  our  neighbors  (we  called 
each  other  neighbors  though  we  were  fifteen  miles  apart), 
that  gales  such  as  I  have  described  were  exceedingly  dan- 
gerous to  life  and  limb.  That  was  because  we  did  not 
know  how  to  deal  with  them.  I  have  since  learned  from 
the  Eskimos  how  to  get  along  in  a  blizzard  and  should 
feel  ashamed  of  myself  if  I  suffered  anything  as  serious 
as  a  frost  bite  from  a  day  out  in  it. 

During  my  cowboy  days  our  neighbors  were  of  the 
regular  American  type,  but  the  farming  community  in 
which  I  passed  my  earlier  years  came  from  countries 
in  Europe  where  literary  ambitions  take  the  place  of  the 
money  making  dreams  that  are  nowadays  more  common. 
Fully  half  our  neighbor  boys  talked  of  going  to  college. 
Their  ambitions  were  to  become  lawyers  and  authors 
and  statesmen.  For  my  part,  I  had  decided  to  become  a 
poet,  and  for  this  I  considered  a  college  education  as  the 
first  requirement.  Through  circumstances  into  which  I 
cannot  go,  but  which  hinged  upon  the  Thanksgiving  bliz- 
zard I  have  just  described,  I  failed  in  my  initial  busi- 
ness venture  (that  of  establishing  a  cattle  ranch  of  my 
own)  and  so  turned  to  the  earlier  college  dreams.  When 
I  left  for  the  Slate  University  I  boarded  a  railway  train 
for  the  first  time  in  my  life,  although  I  had  seen  railway 
trains  perhaps  two  dozen  times  before.  I  had  fifty-three 
dollars,  wore  a  seven-dollar  suit  of  clothes,  and  felt  no 
doubt  of  my  ability  to  work  my  way  through  college. 


PREPARATIONS  7 

This  all  came  to  pass.  I  attended  the  State  University 
of  North  Dakota  to  the  junior  year,  then  the  State  Uni- 
versity of  Iowa  where  I  got  my  Bachelor  of  Arts  degree, 
and  eventually  Harvard  for  three  years  of  post-graduate 
study. 

During  this  college  period  I  had  changed  my  plans 
many  times.  My  poetic  ambitions  lasted  long  enough  for 
me  to  read  nearly  all  the  English  poets  and  those  of  two 
or  three  other  languages.  I  even  wrote  some  poems  that 
were  printed  in  the  college  magazines.  It  may  seem  that 
this  was  no  suitable  preparation  for  my  eventual  career 
of  hunting  polar  bears  and  exploring  polar  lands.  I  am 
not  sure  of  that.  The  explorer  is  the  poet  of  action, 
and  a  great  poet  in  proportion  as  he  is  a  great  explorer. 
He  needs  a  mind  to  see  visions  no  less  than  he  needs  the 
strength  to  face  a  blizzard. 

Somewhere  near  the  middle  of  my  college  career  I 
began  to  see  that  there  is  not  only  the  poetry  of  words 
but  a  poetry  of  deeds.  Magellan's  voyage  rounded  out 
a  magnificent  conception  as  fully  and  finally  as  ever  did 
a  play  of  Shakespeare's.  A  law  of  nature  is  an  imperish- 
able poem. 

Ideas  of  that  sort  decided  me  to  try  to  win  my  spurs 
in  science  rather  than  literature. 

The  sciences  I  selected  for  study  were  those  that  deal 
with  life  on  our  earth.  Darwin  and  Spencer  took  the 
places  formerly  occupied  by  Keats  and  Shelley.  I  dreamt 
of  discovering  some  law  of  life  comparable  in  signifi- 
cance to  the  doctrine  of  evolution.  Finally  I  specialized 
in  anthropology — the  science  that  deals  with  man  and 
his  works  in  general,  but  pays  special  attention  to  what 
the  thoughtless  call  "primitive  people"  or  "savages." 

I  went  to  Harvard  first  to  study  comparative  religions 


8  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

in  the  theological  school,  but  I  later  transferred  to  the 
graduate  school  to  study  other  branches  of  anthropology. 
In  that  connection  I  became  a  teaching  fellow.  Earlier 
in  my  career  I  had  been  a  school  master  for  portions  of 
several  years,  but  I  did  not  like  teaching  very  well  so 
I  decided  to  become  a  field  investigator  of  anthropology 
in  tropical  Africa.  For  two  years  I  used  all  my  spare 
time  reading  books  about  Africa  and  everything  was 
ready  for  me  to  accompany  a  British  commercial  expe- 
dition under  military  escort  that  was  going  into  East 
Central  Africa. 

At  Harvard  in  my  day  it  was  usual  for  a  number  of 
friends  to  form  a  group  and  have  assigned  them  in  the 
dining  room  a  special  table.  At  meals  we  used  to  dis- 
cuss all  sorts  of  things,  including  what  we  had  read  in 
the  papers.  One  day  somebody  asked  me  what  I  thought 
of  the  accounts  then  in  the  press  about  a  new  polar  expe- 
dition being  organized  by  an  American,  Leffingwell,  and 
a  Dane,  Mikkelsen.  They  thought  I  might  be  interested 
for  I  had  written  and  published  the  year  before  an  essay 
on  how  the  Norsemen  discovered  Greenland  about  nine 
hundred  years  ago,  and  how  they  were  the  first  Europeans 
who  ever  saw  Eskimos.  But  I  said  I  had  no  keen  per- 
sonal interest  in  the  proposed  polar  expedition  because 
my  thoughts  for  two  years  had  been  centered  upon  Africa. 

A  day  or  two  after  this  discussion  we  were  again  to- 
gether at  dinner  when  a  messenger  boy  brought  me  a 
telegram.  It  was  signed  by  Ernest  de  Kovcn  Leffingwell, 
and  said  he  would  pay  my  expenses  if  I  would  come  to 
Chicago  to  have  a  talk  about  going  with  his  polar  expe- 
dition to  study  the  Eskimos  in  Victoria  Island  who  had 
never  seen  a  white  man. 

Of  all  the  excited  discussion  which  followed  the  reading 


PREPARATIONS  9 

of  this  telegram  I  remember  only  that  we  guessed  Leffing- 
well  or  some  adviser  of  his  had  read  my  paper  on  the 
discovery  of  Greenland  and  that  this  invitation  to  go 
north  was  the  result.     The  guess  proved  to  be  correct. 

My  decision  was  soon  made  and  I  took  the  first  train 
west.  At  my  talk  with  Leffingwell  it  was  agreed  that  I 
should  join  his  expedition,  not  at  Victoria,  British  Colum- 
bia, where  the  ship  was  being  outfitted  and  where  all 
the  rest  of  the  staff  were  to  gather,  but  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Mackenzie  River.  By  the  map,  these  places  are 
far  apart.  But  it  was  the  plan  of  the  expedition  to  sail 
north  through  the  Pacific  and  through  Bering  Straits  and 
then  to  follow  the  north  coast  of  Alaska  eastward  to  the 
whaling  station  at  Herschel  Island  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Mackenzie  River.  Herschel  Island  was  the  place  I  sel- 
ected for  joining  the  expedition,  and  for  several  reasons. 

I  had  already  crossed  the  Atlantic  four  times  and  had 
learnt  that  one  ocean  wave  looks  much  like  another. 
From  that  point  of  view,  at  least,  there  is  nothing  to  be 
learned  from  a  sea  voyage,  and  I  know  of  nothing  more 
tedious.  If  I  needed  a  rest  I  should  take  a  long  voyage, 
but  I  was  not  feeling  in  need  of  any  rest  just  then.  So  I 
proposed  to  make  instead  the  interesting  and  instructive 
overland  journey  from  Boston  to  the  mouth  of  the  Mac- 
kenzie. The  road  lies  through  a  country  which  is  even 
now  a  wilderness,  although  in  the  seventeen  years  since 
I  made  the  journey  there  have  been  great  developments. 
At  that  time  you  might  have  been  a  well-informed  and 
well-traveled  man  without  ever  having  seen  or  heard  of 
any  one  who  had  made  this  trip.  The  Indians  along 
the  route  were  "unknown  to  science,"  although  they  had 
long  been  in  contact  with  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  fur 
traders  and  other  wilderness  travelers.    Mr.  Leffingwell 


io  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

was  willing  I  should  go  by  this  route  and  meet  the 
expedition  at  the  mouth  of  the  Mackenzie,  providing 
I  would  find  some  way  of  paying  my  own  expenses  that 
far.  I  took  this  up  at  once  with  Harvard  University  and 
the  University  of  Toronto,  and  the  two  universities  agreed 
to  share  the  expense  of  the  overland  and  river  journey. 
In  return  they  were  to  receive  the  information  secured, 
and  the  scientific  collections. 


CHAPTER  II 

DOWN   THE   MACKENZIE  RIVER   THROUGH    2000   MILES  OF 

INDIAN   COUNTRY 

I  left  New  York  in  April,  1906,  and  traveled  by  way  of 
Toronto  and  the  Canadian  Pacific  Railway  to  Winnipeg. 
At  that  time  the  Canadian  Northern  Railway  had  not 
been  completed  to  the  Pacific  Coast  but  the  stretch  be- 
tween Winnipeg  and  Edmonton  had  been  opened.  It 
lay  through  virgin  country  where  farms  and  towns  were 
springing  up  here  and  there  on  the  prairies  or  in  the  wood- 
land places.  I  have  always  had  a  passion  for  new  coun- 
tries and  so  I  preferred  the  as  yet  crude  service  and  un- 
even roadbed  of  the  Canadian  Northern  to  the  smooth 
track  and  perfect  system  of  the  Canadian  Pacific.  It 
took  a  day  and  a  half  for  the  nine  hundred  miles  to  Ed- 
monton. 

From  Winnipeg  on  my  journey  was  under  the  protect- 
ing wing  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  the  oldest  and 
most  romantic  commercial  concern  in  the  world  and  even 
to-day  one  of  the  greatest  in  capital  and  financial  power. 
Lord  Strathcona  was  the  world  head  of  the  Company  with 
offices  in  London,  but  in  Canada  their  wide  empire  in  the 
North  was  controlled  by  the  Chief  Commissioner,  C.  C. 
Chipman,  who  welcomed  me  in  Winnipeg.  With  official 
courtesy  and  great  personal  kindness  he  gave  me  advice 
and  saw  to  it  that  the  "servants"  (as  the  employees  of 
this  ancient  organization  are  still  called)  should  give  me 
every  assistance.    Through  him  I  met  the  distinguished 

11 


12  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

scientist-explorer,  Roderick  Macfarlane,  who  had  been 
to  the  arctic  coast  as  early  as  1867  when  the  Indians  still 
lived  in  perpetual  dread  of  the  warlike  and  more  power- 
ful Eskimos  to  the  north  of  them  who  made  raids  at  will 
as  much  as  four  hundred  miles  into  the  Indian  country, 
the  Indians  never  thinking  to  make  resistance  and  vacat- 
ing large  stretches  of  country  whenever  the  Eskimos  ap- 
proached. Luckily  for  the  Indians,  the  Eskimos  have  a 
prejudice  against  living  in  a  forest  in  the  winter  time, 
thinking  that  a  tree  shade  from  the  sun  may  be  agreeable 
but  having  no  idea  that  the  shelter  of  a  forest  from  the 
wind  is  anything  to  be  desired.  Else  they  might  have 
despoiled  the  Indians  permanently  of  their  hunting 
grounds. 

Macfarlane  told  me  that  the  Eskimo  war  parties  seemed 
to  have  only  one  object  and  that  was  to  secure  suitable 
stone  in  a  quarry  near  Fort  Good  Hope  from  which  to 
make  their  knives  and  the  sharp  tips  of  the  arrows  with 
which  they  hunted  caribou  and  the  harpoons  with  which 
they  hunted  seals  and  whales.  They  came,  he  said,  in 
singing  and  shouting  boatloads  four  hundred  miles  from 
their  own  country  at  the  mouth  of  the  Mackenzie  River 
to  Good  Hope.  The  time  of  their  arrival  was  so  carefully 
gauged  in  advance  by  the  increasing  summer  heat  that 
the  Indians  had  grown  to  know  the  proper  fleeing  time. 
Accordingly,  they  used  to  abandon  their  river  bank  vil- 
lages in  May  and  retreat  into  the  forest,  not  returning  to 
the  Mackenzie  again  until  autumn  when  they  knew  the 
Eskimos  would  be  f<mc.  As  the  villages  consisted  of 
tents  iliat  could  be  carried  away,  the  Eskimos  found  noth- 
to  plunder.  It  was  only -when  some  accident  broughl 
Indians  and  Eskimos  ier  that  bloodshed  occurred. 

If  the  parties  were  anything  like  the  same  strength  or  if 


DOWN  THE  MACKENZIE  RIVER  13 

the  Indians  were  fewer  they  used  to  flee,  but  occasionally 
it  happened  that  a  large  number  of  Indians  came  upon  a 
few  Eskimos  who  had  become  separated  from  the  main 
party.  In  those  cases  the  Indians  would  kill  the  Eskimos. 
I  had  read  stories  of  just  this  kind  in  the  books  of  the 
early  explorers,  such  as  Sir  John  Richardson.  It  was 
impressive  to  hear  them  from  the  lips  of  a  gentle  old  man 
like  Macfarlane  who  had  himself  been  in  the  country 
towards  the  end  of  this  period  of  hostility  while  the  fear 
of  bloodshed  still  prevailed  though  the  battles  themselves 
no  longer  occurred  and  although  the  Hudson's  Bay  Com- 
pany was  now  supplying  the  Eskimos  with  iron  in  place 
of  their  stone  implements,  so  that  they  no  longer  had  any 
occasion  to  make  long  journeys  to  the  stone  quarries  at 
Good  Hope.  It  had  been  one  of  the  earliest  tasks  of  the 
Company  to  make  peace  between  the  Indians  and  Eski- 
mos. In  this  they  had  succeeded  pretty  well  even  be- 
fore Macfarlane's  time,  and  still  not  completely,  for  Mac- 
farlane himself  was  once  robbed  by  the  most  pugnacious 
of  all  the  Eskimo  "tribes,"  the  Kupagmiut,  or  people  of 
the  Great  River,  who  lived  at  certain  seasons  of  year  on 
a  branch  of  the  Mackenzie  delta  but  who  wandered  far 
afield  either  in  large  or  small  groups.  It  was  with  this 
very  group  I  was  destined  to  spend  the  coming  winter, 
though  I  did  not  know  it  when  I  was  talking  with 
Macfarlane. 

As  interesting  as  the  scholarly  Macfarlane  was  John 
Anderson,  who  under  the  title  of  "Chief  Trader  of  the 
Mackenzie  District"  was  in  effect  viceroy  over  a  northern 
empire.  This  was  a  position  which  Macfarlane  had  held 
before  him.  Although  younger  in  years,  Anderson  be- 
longed to  an  older  school  of  thought.  He  had  come  as  a 
boy  from  the  north  of  Scotland  directly  into  the  Com- 


14  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

pany's  service.  This  was  in  the  days  when  the  Company 
had  not  as  yet  traded  away  for  money  and  for  other 
valuable  considerations  the  right  which  they  once  had 
actually  to  govern  Canada,  administering  justice  and  hav- 
ing even  the  power  of  life  and  death,  not  only  over  their 
employees  but  over  any  one  who  penetrated  the  country 
with  or  without  their  consent.  Even  alter  these  ancient 
powers  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  had  been  sur- 
rendered, the  tradition  of  exercising  them  still  prevailed 
and  Anderson  could  never  quite  understand  that  any  one 
had  a  right  to  enter  the  north  country  without  the  con- 
sent of  the  Company.  I  learned  later  that  his  attitude 
towards  all  he  met  there  was  that  of  a  generous  and  hos- 
pitable host  who,  nevertheless,  was  much  on  his  dignity, 
ready  to  consider  it  an  affront  if  anything  was  done  with- 
out his  knowledge  and  approval.  He  knew  his  legal 
rights  of  overlordship  had  been  curtailed  but  he  simply 
could  not  bring  himself  to  realize  it. 

Many  who  knew  Anderson  liked  him  as  I  did;  there 
were  many  others  who  disliked  and  even  hated  him,  and 
chiefly  because  of  his  intense  loyalty  to  the  Company  and 
his  inability  to  realize  that  "new  occasions  teach  new 
duties"  and  that  "time  makes  ancient  good  uncouth." 

I  made  the  journey  with  Anderson  from  Winnipeg  to 
Edmonton.  In  both  cities  and  on  the  way  between,  his 
hospitality  was  so  insistent  as  to  be  embarrassing.  When 
once  we  passed  beyond  Edmonton  this  changed  like  the 
switching  on  of  a  light  of  another  color  and  he  became 
more  penurious  than  can  readily  be  imagined.  This  was 
another  of  his  traits  which  caused  much  misunderstanding 
and  ill  feeling  but  which  a  few  of  us  understood  and  sym- 
pathized with.  South  of  Edmonton  he  was  a  private 
person,  spending  his  own  money  as  he  liked;   north  of 


DOWN  THE  MACKENZIE  RIVER  15 

Edmonton  he  was  a  servant  of  the  Company,  viceroy,  in- 
deed, of  a  vast  empire,  but  handling  only  supplies  which 
belonged  to  the  Company  and  not  to  him.  Nearly  every 
Hudson's  Bay  man  of  that  time  and  many  of  them  even 
to-day  have  that  feeling  of  trusteeship  which  makes  it 
unthinkable  to  let  anything  go  to  waste  that  belongs  to 
the  Company.  But  few  if  any  carried  it  to  such  extremes 
as  Anderson. 

To  most  of  us  it  was  laughable.  He  would,  for  in- 
stance, try  to  impress  on  every  one  that  no  matter  what 
they  paid  for  their  transportation  and  daily  food  they 
were  not  paying  nearly  as  much  as  the  bother  of  carrying 
them  was  worth.  For  that  reason  he  insisted  we  were  all 
guests  of  the  Company  and  not  ordinary  passengers  and 
we  owed  to  the  Company  the  courtesy  of  a  guest  towards 
a  host.  One  thing  he  felt  we  should  not  do  was  to  com- 
mence eating  before  he  started  or  to  continue  after  he 
stopped.  He  ate  frugally  and  rapidly  but  in  his  opinion 
the  quantity  he  ate  was  enough  and  the  time  was  sufficient 
for  any  one  to  eat  all  that  was  good  for  him.  He  ex- 
pected us  to  stop  eating  when  he  did  and  I  for  one  always 
did  so,  but  there  were  six  or  eight  other  passengers 
(missionaries,  Government  officials,  etc.)  who  felt  they 
were  paying  enough  for  their  food  and  that  they  were 
entitled  to  gorge  themselves  if  they  chose.  Anderson 
spoke  of  them  with  bitterness  as  lacking  in  courtesy,  as 
gluttonous  and  as  unable  to  appreciate  how  precious 
food  is  and  how  many  people  there  are  in  the  world  who 
have  not  enough  of  it.  That  was  a  point  of  view  little 
comprehensible  then  but  one  which  we  understand  better 
now  since  the  Great  War  put  us  on  rations  and  since  we 
have  come  into  more  intimate  contact  with  famines  in 
Russia,  China  and  elsewhere. 


16  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

A  few  years  before  Edmonton  had  been  but  a  fur  trad- 
ing outpost,  but  by  1906  it  was  a  city  of  six  or  eight 
thousand  people  and  since  then  it  has  grown  to  sixty 
thousand  (in  1922).  The  railways  did  extend  west 
beyond  it,  but  not  north  beyond  it,  and  so  we  had  to 
drive  by  a  horse  stage  chiefly  through  sandy  land  covered 
with  jack  pine,  a  hundred  miles  to  the  head  of  river 
navigation  at  Athabasca  Landing  on  Athabasca  River. 
This  was  then  a  town  of  some  five  or  six  hundred,  half 
the  people  either  pure  or  part  Indian.  In  Edmonton 
the  northern  fur  trade  had  been  an  important  topic  of 
conversation  but  in  Athabasca  Landing  it  was  the  only 
topic. 

Below  Athabasca  Landing  two  methods  of  river  travel 
were  in  use.  There  was  a  steamer,  the  Midnight  Sun, 
and  there  were  flat-bottomed  boats  called  scows,  each 
carrying  about  eight  tons  of  freight  and  manned  by  crews 
of  Cree  Indians.  The  method  of  travel  by  scow  was  more 
picturesque  and  in  reality  more  rapid,  as  our  experience 
showed.  I  used  that  method  on  my  second  journey  down 
the  Mackenzie  with  great  satisfaction.  On  this  first  jour- 
ney I  chose  the  steamer,  not  having  the  northern  point 
of  view  and  being  prejudiced  in  favor  of  steamers,  be- 
lieving in  their  greater  speed  and  comfort. 

A  floating  log  would  have  outdistanced  the  Midnight 
Sun  several  times  over,  for  it  took  us  thirteen  days  to 
navigate  165  miles  down  stream.  This  may  be  the  slow 
record  for  down  river  steamboat  navigation.  There  were 
many  reasons.  For  one  thing,  we  used  to  get  shipwrecked 
every  so  often.  Being  shipwrecked  sounds  rather  excit- 
ing but  was  a  tame  performance  on  the  Midnight  Sun. 
She  was  used  to  it  and  knew  exactly  how  to  do  it.  Be- 
cause of  her  aptitude  in  sinking,  Lee,  an  expert  canoe- 


DOWN  THE  MACKENZIE  RIVER  17 

man  of  our  party,  and  also  our  leading  humorist,  gave 
her  the  nickname  by  which  we  always  called  her — the 
Rockbound  Limited. 

One  of  our  fellow-passengers  was  a  clergyman  new  out 
of  England  on  his  way  to  a  mission  station  at  Fort  Nor- 
man just  south  of  the  arctic  circle.  His  was  a  restless 
curiosity  about  all  things  indigenous  to  the  country,  but 
he  admitted  that  the  more  he  investigated  the  more  de- 
pressed he  became.  He  told  me  that  he  would  have 
turned  south  before  ever  he  reached  his  subarctic  station, 
oppressed  with  the  depravity  of  the  "civilized"  Indians 
whom  he  already  more  than  half-suspected  of  inability 
to  see  the  superiority  of  the  Anglican  over  the  Catholic 
Church,  but  for  two  things  which  kept  him  to  his  job — 
the  encouragement  of  Bishop  Reeve,  who  had  seen  much 
improvement  among  the  Indians  in  his  time  and  was 
therefore  optimistic,  and  his  own  pride  which  forbade 
turning  back  from  work  once  undertaken. 

And  if  his  missionary  ardors  were  somewhat  cooled 
by  the  unromantic  aspect  of  lazy-looking,  gambling  In- 
dians dressed  in  cheap  ready-made  city  clothes,  they  were 
no  less  affected  by  the  mosquitoes.  In  England  he  had 
vaguely  anticipated  the  possibility  of  being  tomahawked 
by  savages  and  he  modestly  doubted  whether  he  could 
have  met  such  a  death  with  fortitude.  Martyrdom  be- 
fore lions  or  howling  savages  could  perhaps  be  met  cour- 
ageously in  an  instant  of  spiritual  exaltation.  But  mar- 
tyrdom through  being  tortured  for  days  and  weeks  by 
insect  pests  was  a  wholly  different  thing.  In  the  stifling 
afternoon  heat  when  (on  one  occasion)  the  temperature 
on  our  boat  rose  to  1030  in  the  shade,  he  had  to  wear 
heavy  clothing  and  even  then  the  mosquitoes  crawled 
down  the  gauntlet  of  his  glove  and  bit  him  on  the  wrist 


18  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

if  nowhere  else.  At  other  times  if  he  took  off  his  face 
net  to  get  a  breath  of  free  air,  they  stung  him  on  ears 
and  nose  and  cheek.  So  they  stung  all  the  rest  of  us, 
and  we  itched  no  less  than  he.  But  we  had  been  inocu- 
lated in  other  years  with  the  virus  of  the  mosquito  and 
had  developed  antitoxins  that  prevented  inflammation, 
while  he  was  almost  fresh  from  mosquitoless  England. 
Wherever  an  insect  bit  he  became  flecked  and  bloated. 
Then  he  scratched  and  rubbed  the  swellings  till  they  were 
raw  and  began  to  smart  more  than  they  itched. 

But  if  he  was  depressed  by  the  appearance  of  his 
prospective  converts  and  tortured  by  the  heat  and  the 
insects,  he  still  felt  a  mild  craving  for  adventure.  He 
looked  on  the  map  to  see  that  he  was  veritably  hundreds 
of  miles  from  railway  and  telegraph,  and  thereby  suc- 
ceeded in  half-convincing  himself  that  the  country  could 
not  be  in  reality  as  tame  as  it  looked.  Somewhere  ro- 
mance must  be  lurking  concealed  by  the  tangled  under- 
brush. A  few  times  we  had  seen  from  our  steamer  black 
bears  hunched  up  in  the  tops  of  trees,  and  once  or  twice 
our  Indian  deckhands  had  been  allowed  to  go  ashore  and 
murder  these  defenseless  animals  that  had  been  scared 
into  climbing  a  tree  by  the  noise  of  our  steamer.  Our 
missionary  had  no  real  thirst  for  blood  so  he  never  joined 
in  these  expeditions.  But  when  the  steamer  tied  up  to 
the  bank  either  because  night  was  about  to  fall  or  else 
because  they  needed  wood  for  engine  fuel,  he  used  to  go 
in  search  of  Mild  adventure — to  discover  and  report  new 
flowers,  stra-  qe  birds  or  the  tracks  of  moose. 

One  evening  at  twilight  he  met  in  the  bush  a  pretty 
animal  of  black  and  white  stripes,  slow-moving  and  ap- 
proachable. In  fact,  it  was  standing  still  in  the  path 
before   him.   so   he   killed   it   with   a   club.     Upon   the 


DOWN  THE  MACKENZIE  RIVER  19 

unanimous  request  of  the  passengers  and  crew  of  our 
steamer  he  had  to  change  his  clothes  at  once  when  he 
came  back  from  this  adventure.  I  believe  there  is  a  way 
of  getting  rid  of  skunk  odor  from  clothing;  but  our 
clergyman  was  so  mortified  that  he  took  no  advice  from 
any  one  on  that  point,  put  all  his  garments  in  a  bundle 
and  dropped  them  overboard  into  the  river  when  no  one 
was  looking.  I  think  this  was  his  clerical  suit,  and  that 
it  was  his  only  clerical  suit.  However,  the  Indians  of 
the  lower  Mackenzie  were  not  at  that  time  sticklers  for 
form,  and  probably  did  not  know  whether  they  belonged 
to  the  High  or  Low  Church,  so  that  his  being  without 
clerical  garments  may  not  have  proved  a  serious  handicap 
when  he  got  to  his  field  of  work. 

One  of  the  great  sights  as  we  went  down  the  river  in 
1906  was  the  burning  gas  well  at  Pelican  Rapids.  The 
whole  Mackenzie  valley,  of  which  the  Athabasca  is  a 
part,  has  since  been  shown  to  be  a  country  of  many  oil 
prospects,  and  oil  wells  are  now  actually  flowing  in  some 
places.  At  that  time  we  had  indications  of  this  by  get- 
ting our  boots  smeared  with  what  we  called  mineral  tar 
when  we  walked  along  the  river  bank. 

The  Pelican  Rapids  gas  well  was  a  spectacular  demon- 
stration of  the  power  and  wealth  that  may  lie  under  the 
surface.  Some  years  before,  a  party  had  been  there  drill- 
ing for  oil  and  had  struck  natural  gas  instead.  The  gas 
has  been  flowing  ever  since.  Some  one  had  set  fire  to  it 
and  it  was  now  burning  as  a  torch,  with  flames  shooting 
some  ten  or  fifteen  feet  into  the  air.  At  night  it  illumined 
with  a  flickering  light  the  broad  Athabasca  on  one  side 
and  the  forest  on  the  other.  I  was  poetical  in  those  days 
and  wrote  in  my  diary  that  this  was  the  torch  of  science 


20  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

lighting  the  way  to  the  Far  North  for  explorers  and  engi- 
neers and  captains  of  industry. 

At  Grand  Rapids  Island,  165  miles  down  stream  from 
Athabasca  Landing,  we  came  on  the  thirteenth  day  to 
the  end  of  our  steamboat  navigation.  There  is  here  an 
island  in  the  middle  of  the  river.  The  rapids  between  it 
and  the  west  bank  are  spectacular  and  so  dangerous  that 
we  heard  of  no  attempt  to  run  them  by  boat.  They  will 
doubtless  sometime  give  water  power  to  a  city  and  to 
factories  built  in  that  vicinity. 

The  rapids  to  the  east  of  the  island  are  spectacular 
enough  but  they  are  occasionally  run  by  expert  canoemen 
and  sometimes  by  the  scows  of  the  fur  traders.  The 
scows  are  unloaded  at  the  upper  end  of  the  island,  which 
is  about  half  a  mile  long.  Sometimes  they  are  carried 
on  a  tramway  across  the  island,  and  the  freight  always 
is  so  carried.  Some  of  the  scows  run  the  rapids.  Serious 
accidents  do  not  often  happen  but  danger  is  always  immi- 
nent and  whoever  is  within  reach  always  goes  out  to  a 
vantage  point  and  watches  breathlessly  as  the  rapids  are 
being  run. 

It  is  common  that  Indians  have  a  contempt  for  the 
rivercraft,  woodcraft  and  plainscraft  of  white  men.  This 
is  partly  because  many  white  men  who  go  beyond  the 
frontier  are  unbelievably  helpless  and  partly  because  the 
white  men  themselves  have  an  exaggerated  respect  for  the 
ability  of  the  Indians  and  tell  the  Indians  that  no  white 
man  can  do  certain  things  which  to  en  Indian  are  easy. 
It  is  human  to  believe  that  we  excel  in  one  way  or  an- 
other, and  so  the  Indian  readily  puts  on  himself  the  .white 
man's  valuation. 

But  it  is  a  fact  that  there  are  few  such  canoemen  in  the 
world  as  are  developed  in  certain  parts  of  Ontario.    Our 


DOWN  THE  MACKENZIE  RIVER  21 

humorist  Lee  was  one  of  these.  He  had  never  seen  the 
Grand  Rapids  of  the  Athabasca  and  everybody  knew  he 
had  never  seen  them.  But  both  Indians  and  whites  had 
told  him  much  about  how  dangerous  they  were.  By 
watching  Indians  farther  up  river,  he  had  formed  a  con- 
tempt for  their  boatmanship,  and  when  he  heard  that 
some  Indians  had  run  the  rapids  in  canoes  he  went  to 
Anderson  and  succeeded  in  borrowing  a  small  new  Peter- 
borough that  we  were  carrying  to  sell  to  some  wealthy 
Indian  down  the  river.  Getting  into  this  canoe  he  pad- 
dled towards  the  rapids.  To  the  astonishment  of  these 
of  us  who  knew  little  about  rivercraft,  he  turned  his 
canoe  around  as  he  was  approaching  the  rapids  and  ran 
the  half  mile  of  seething  water  backward.  This  im- 
pressed the  local  Indians  even  more  than  it  did  the  white 
men,  especially  as  they  knew  that  he  had  not  seen  the 
rapids  before. 

Below  the  Grand  Rapids  we  took  to  the  scows  and  navi- 
gated the  rest  of  the  distance  to  Fort  McMurray  more 
rapidly  and  far  more  pleasantly.  We  had  several  ex- 
citing rapids  to  run,  and  once  a  scow  was  thrown  against 
a  boulder  and  broken  so  badly  that  it  sank  just  at  the 
foot  of  the  rapids  and  as  the  crew  were  approaching  the 
bank.  The  sugar  it  carried  and  similar  trade  goods  were 
entirely  spoilt.  A  rather  amusing  circumstance  was  that 
a  bale  containing  ribbons  of  all  colors  became  soaking  wet. 
The  colors  were  not  fast,  and  when  the  ribbons  were  taken 
out  to  dry,  c  ich.  was  found  to  have  upon  it  a  little  of  the 
color  of  all  the  others.  I  imagined  this  would  ruin  the 
ribbons,  but  was  told  that  the  consignment  was  for  one 
of  the  remote  posts  on  the  Liard  branch  of  the  Mackenzie 
and  that  the  Indians  up  there  would  not  mind.  One  of 
the  traders  said  that  you  never  could  tell  exactly  how 


22  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

those  things  would  strike  the  Indians.  It  was  even  pos- 
sible that  this  lot  would  prove  more  popular  than  any 
other  and  might  set  a  fashion  so  the  Indians  would  de- 
mand similar  multicolored  ribbons  next  year. 

There  were  three  things  I  did  not  like  about  our  journey 
down  stream.  The  first  was  the  increasing  heat.  After 
the  middle  of  June  we  began  to  suffer  from  it  a  good  deal. 
One  day  the  temperature  was  1030  in  the  shade.  It  was 
a  humid  heat  and  therefore  difficult  to  stand.  A  tempera- 
ture of  no°  or  1150  in  a  desert  like  Arizona  would  be 
far  less  unpleasant. 

Our  second  trouble  was  that  the  mosquitoes  were  get- 
ting worse  day  by  day.  Towards  the  20th  of  June  they 
were  so  bad  that  they  annoyed  us  even  in  midriver.  When 
we  landed  they  came  about  us  in  swarms.  If  the  weather 
had  been  cool  it  might  not  have  been  unpleasant  to  dress 
heavily  enough  so  that  mosquitoes  could  not  sting  through, 
but  in  the  extreme  heat  it  is  exceedingly  unpleasant  to 
wear  thick  clothes  all  over  your  body,  heavy  buckskin 
gauntlet  gloves  on  your  hands,  a  big  sombrero  on  your 
head,  and  a  mosquito  net  that  is  gathered  around  the 
crown  of  the  hat,  comes  out  over  the  brim  and  has  to  be 
tucked  under  the  collar  of  your  coat  so  as  to  prevent  in- 
sects from  exploring  your  back.  When  it  is  hot  you  want 
every  breath  of  air  and  a  veil  of  heavy  mosquito  netting 
keeps  a  good  deal  of  the  air  away. 

Luckily  I  do  not  smoke.  It  was  amusing  to  see  the 
bother  the  smokers  had.  They  would  get  long-stemmed 
pipes,  make  small  round  holes  in  the  mosquito  netting, 
and  thrust  the  stems  of  the  pipes  through  so  they  could 
puff  at  them.  Occasionally  a  mosquito  would  get  on  the 
stem  of  a  pipe  and  crawl  in  that  way.  This  was  not  so 
likely  to  happen,  however;   but  when  the  smoker  was 


DOWN  THE  MACKENZIE  RIVER  23 

through  there  was  a  hole  in  his  netting  through  which  a 
few  mosquitoes  would  be  sure  to  find  their  way. 

It  is  difficult  to  describe  adequately  the  unbelievable 
plague  of  mosquitoes  in  the  North.  As  you  go  nearer  and 
nearer  to  the  arctic  circle  they  become  worse  and  worse. 
I  have  found  by  experience  that  people  will  never  believe 
the  truth  about  the  northern  mosquitoes  and  so,  instead  of 
trying  to  describe  them  myself,  I  am  quoting  Ernest 
Thompson  Seton's  "The  Arctic  Prairies,"  pp.  63-64: 

"Each  day  they  got  worse:  soon  it  became  clear  that  mere 
adjectives  could  not  convey  any  idea  of  their  terrors.  There- 
fore I  devised  a  mosquito  gauge.  I  held  up  a  bare  hand  for 
5  seconds  by  the  watch,  then  counted  the  number  of  borers 
on  the  back;  there  were  5  to  10.  Each  day  added  to  the 
number,  and  when  we  got  out  to  the  buffalo  country,  there 
were  15  to  25  on  the  one  side  of  the  hand  and  elsewhere  in 
proportion.  On  the  Hyarling,  in  early  July,  the  number  was 
increased,  being  20  to  40.  On  Great  Slave  Lake,  later  that 
month,  there  were  50  to  60.  But  when  we  reached  the  Barren 
Grounds,  the  land  of  open  breezy  plains  and  cold  water  lakes, 
the  pests  were  so  bad  that  the  hand  held  up  for  5  seconds 
often  showed  from  100  to  125  long-billed  mosquitoes  boring 
away  into  the  flesh.  It  was  possible  to  number  them  only 
by  killing  them  and  counting  the  corpses.  What  wonder  that 
all  men  should  avoid  the  open  plains,  that  are  the  kingdom 
of  such  a  scourge." 

Of  the  three  things  I  did  not  like  on  our  northward 
journey,  I  mention  last  the  unforgettable  cruelty  towards 
their  dogs  shown  by  most  of  the  Indians  and  by  some  of 
the  white  trappers  and  traders. 

There  are  various  apparently  incongruous  things  about 
how  an  Indian  treats  his  team.  To  begin  with,  he  likes 
to  have  them  fine  in  appearance,  fat,  with  a  glossy  fur 
and  a  proud  carriage  of  the  head  and  tail.    This  is  not 


24  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

easy  to  reconcile  with  his  insistence  that  the  dogs  shall 
jump  every  time  he  makes  a  noise  or  a  move  and  espe- 
cially when  he  cracks  a  whip.  To  this  end  he  beats  them 
unmercifully.  I  have  often  seen  Indians  hitch  up  their 
dog  teams  in  the  early  morning,  tie  them  to  a  tree  and 
with  a  whip  that  cracks  like  pistol  shots  beat  one  dog 
after  the  other  as  they  lie  tied  and  helpless  in  the  harness 
until  each  one  of  them  is  mad  with  fear  and  pain.  Then 
they  untie  them  and  the  sleigh  dashes  off  at  full  speed. 

The  mind  of  a  dog  has  the  same  power  over  his  body 
that  our  minds  have  over  our  bodies.  Most  Indian  dogs, 
therefore,  have  a  cringing  attitude  which  the  Indian  does 
not  really  like,  for  he  wants  a  proud  appearance.  To 
gain  that,  he  lavishes  all  his  ingenuity  and  a  large  part  of 
his  money  upon  decorations.  There  are  ribbons  and  all 
sorts  of  adornments,  and  there  are  bells  of  every  size  and 
liquid  note  that  tinkle  and  chime  with  the  slightest  move- 
ment of  the  dogs.  The  bells  are  on  the  collars  of  the 
harness  and  sometimes  on  vertical  rods  that  stand  high 
above  the  collars  and  wag  from  side  to  side  as  the  dogs 
move.  Then  there  are  bells  along  the  backs  of  the  dogs 
and  in  whatever  place  is  most  likely  to  tremble  or  shake 
as  the  animals  move. 

If  the  Indian  is  particular  about  what  he  considers 
good  form  in  starting  out  in  the  morning,  he  is  far  more 
particular  about  the  style  in  which  he  arrives  at  a  village. 
For  that  reason  it  has  been  the  custom,  in  the  lower  Mac- 
kenzie at  least,  that  the  Indians  who  are  coming  into  the 
fur  trading  posts  will  camp  the  evening  before  five  or  ten 
miles  away,  so  as  to  give  their  dogs  a  good  night's  rest. 
In  the  morning  they  are  hitched  up,  beaten  and  otherwise 
thrown  into  a  high  excitement,  and  then  the  cavalcade 
dashes  at  top  speed  into  the  trading  post  just  at  the 


DOWN  THE  MACKENZIE  RIVER  25 

psychological  moment — commonly  the  middle  of  the  fore- 
noon when  the  daylight  is  already  clear  and  when  the 
factor  and  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  post  have  had  their 
breakfast  and  are  ready  to  come  out  and  watch  and  wel- 
come the  arriving  sledges. 

This  is  a  partial  picture  of  the  dog's  winter  life  as  I 
was  told  about  in  1906  and  as  I  have  seen  it  since.  Dur- 
ing winter  he  has  the  advantage  of  being  well  fed,  for 
his  master  needs  his  strength  and  wants  him  to  appear 
well.  But  the  Indians  have  found  that  a  few  weeks  of 
ample  feeding  will  put  a  dog  into  good  condition.  During 
the  summer  they  do  no  driving  and  can  make  no  osten- 
tatious use  of  their  dogs.  It  is,  accordingly,  the  custom 
to  stop  feeding  them  in  the  spring  and  let  them  rustle 
for  themselves  during  the  summer.  The  result  was  that 
by  the  time  we  began  our  journey  down  the  Athabasca 
(early  June)  the  dogs  had  already  been  starved  into 
/skeletons.  They  were  skulking  about  everywhere,  look- 
ing for  any  scrap  they  might  eat.  Sometimes  they  would 
find  a  greasy  rag,  swallow  it  because  it  smelt  like  food, 
and  die  in  agony  because  a  rag  is  indigestible  and  sticks 
in  the  intestines. 

Every  one  has  to  protect  his  property,  and  for  that 
reason  a  dog  is  occasionally  killed  when  caught  stealing 
or  attempting  to  steal.  So  far  as  dogs  are  concerned, 
cruelty  is  in  the  air.  A  maimed  dog  is  a  great  joke.  I 
remember  particularly  a  white  man  who  had  been  in  the 
country  only  three  or  four  years  but  whose  disposition 
was  such  that  he  had  taken  naturally  to  the  ways  of  the 
Indian.  It  is  frequently  the  case  and  was  so  here,  that 
this  man  was  worse  than  almost  any  Indian.  I  have 
forgotten  now  what  it  was  that  he  had  in  front  of  his 
camp  but  it  was  something  tempting  to  dogs.    He  kept 


26  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

the  tent  door  open  and  by  his  side  he  had  two  or  three 
hatchets.  When  he  saw  a  strange  and  starving  dog  ap- 
proaching his  property  outside  he  would  watch  till  the 
animal  was  about  to  take  a  bite,  and  then  throw  a  hatchet 
at  him.  I  never  knew  him  actually  to  kill  a  dog,  but  I 
saw  one  case  of  a  broken  shoulder  and  heard  of  other 
serious  injuries.  Some  of  the  Indians  made  claims  upon 
this  man  for  maiming  their  dogs  and  even  charged  him 
with  cruelty.  Judging  by  how  they  themselves  behaved, 
I  should  say  that  this  was  pretended  sympathy  for  the 
dogs  and  was  put  on  merely  in  an  attempt  to  recover 
damages  from  the  well-to-do  white  man. 

Some  of  the  Indians  who  were  our  boatmen  owned  one 
or  several  of  these  starving  dogs.  It  is  difficult  to  see  how 
dogs  could  have  affection  for  such  owners,  but  still  that 
appeared  to  be  the  case,  in  some  instances  at  least.  Or 
it  may  have  been  merely  that  the  wretched  things  knew 
no  other  hope  than  to  follow  their  masters  around.  Twenty 
06  thirty  of  them  kept  abreast  of  us  on  the  river  bank  as 
we  proceeded  down  stream.  The  current  is  now  along 
one  bank  and  now  along  the  other,  and  a  boat  keeps  to 
the  current.  When  we  shifted  with  the  current  to  the  far 
side  of  the  stream  the  poor  dogs  knew  no  better  than  to 
jump  in  and  swim  the  quarter  or  half  mile  of  turbulent 
water  to  climb  up  on  the  bank  nearest  us.  The  fo-est 
was  thick  along  the  river  and  heaps  of  drift  logs  w?re 
piled  in  certain  places.  This  made  difficult  traveling  for 
dogs  already  weak  with  hunger,  and  one  by  one  they 
dropped  behind.  I  did  not  know  whether  their  destiny 
was  to  die  of  starvation  or  whether  they  would  return  to 
some  village  and  perhaps  live  through  the  summer.  I 
asked  the  Indians  about  it  but  they  did  not  seem  either 
to  know  or  care. 


DOWN  THE  MACKENZIE  RIVER  27 

It  seems  unbelievable  but  appears  to  be  the  fact  that 
even  with  this  treatment  a  majority  of  the  dogs  do  live 
through  the  summer  somehow.  I  was  told  that  Indians 
whose  dogs  are  left  behind  as  the  boats  go  down  stream, 
will  later  in  the  summer  when  they  are  journeying  back 
up  stream  inquire  for  their  dogs  from  village  to  village, 
and  that  they  usually  manage  to  pick  up  most  of  them 
before  they  get  to  their  home  settlements. 

At  McMurray  the  steamer  Grahame  was  waiting  for  us. 
She  was  so  much  like  an  ordinary  river  steamer  of  the 
Mississippi  or  Ohio  that  she  is  not  worth  describing.  We 
made  our  journey  in  her  rapidly  and  comfortably  down 
the  rest  of  the  Athabasca,  then  across  Athabasca  Lake 
and  down  to  the  head  of  the  sixteen-mile  series  of  rapids 
known  as  the  Smith  Portage. 

At  the  head  of  Smith  Rapids  is  a  fur  trading  post 
which  was  then  called  Smith's  Landing  after  a  man  who 
has  left  his  impression  upon  Canadian  history  and  upon 
Canada  partly  in  the  form  of  place  names.  These  place 
names  in  turn  preserve  his  history  by  the  way  they 
change.  He  used  to  be  plain  Donald  Smith  and  at  that 
stage  Smith's  Landing  and  a  good  many  other  places 
were  named  after  him.  Then  he  became  Sir  Donald 
Smith  and  many  places  bear  that  name,  among  them 
none  so  famous  at  present  as  Mount  Sir  Donald  in  the 
Rockies  that  is  each  year  admired  through  the  windows 
of  moving  trains  by  about  two  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 
sand travelers  over  the  Canadian  Pacific  Railway.  When 
his  power  was  at  the  greatest  and  when  he  had  become 
one  of  the  leading  figures  in  the  British  Empire  and  in  the 
world,  this  same  man  was  Lord  Strathcona,  after  whom 
are  named  hotels  and  parks,  villages  and  cities,  rivers 


28  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

and  mountains  and  lakes  all  over  Canada  and  in  many 
other  countries. 

In  the  terrific  humid  midsummer  heat  I  walked  the 
sandy  road  across  rolling  hills  and  occasionally  waded 
through  small  patches  of  swamp  from  the  head  of  Smith 
Rapids  to  Fort  Smith  which  stands  at  the  lower  end. 
The  roar  of  the  rapids  could  be  heard  through  the  forest 
which  hid  the  river.  ,  I  should  have  liked  to  see  the  whirl- 
pools and  waterfalls  and  especially  the  pelican  rookery 
on  a  little  island,  for  this  is  said  to  be  the  most  northerly 
rookery  of  that  bird  in  the  world.  But  I  had  not  as  yet 
become  acclimated  enough  to  the  North  to  have  the  cour- 
age to  fight  the  mosquitoes  through  as  long  and  tedious 
a  battle  as  would  have  been  necessary  had  I  clambered 
my  way  among  the  boulders  and  through  the  brush  along 
the  river's  brink  for  fifteen  miles.  Just  then  nothing  ap- 
peared to  me  so  desirable  as  getting  quickly  into  a  house 
at  Fort  Smith  where  mosquito  netting  and  closed  doors 
would  shut  out  the  insect  world. 

At  the  Rapids  we  left  behind  our  humorist,  the  same 
Lee  who  had  astounded  the  natives  as  a  canoeman.  His 
job  was  to  build  the  sawmill  which  was  to  produce  the 
lumber  needed  for  the  construction  of  a  more  modern 
river  steamer  for  service  on  the  lower  Mackenzie.  In  his 
main  purpose  Lee  succeeded  well,  for  two  years  later  on 
my  second  journey  through  this  country  I  photographed 
the  launching  of  the  Mackenzie  River,  which  had  been 
built  in  the  intervening  two  years  from  the  lumber  cut 
by  Lee's  sawmill.  She  has  been  [living  regularly  since 
then  up  and  down  the  magnificent  1300  mile  waterway 
that  lies  between  the  Smith  Rapids  and  the  head  of  the 
Mackenzie  delta  well  within  the  arctic  circle. 

The  Wrigley  awaited  us  at  Fort  Smith.     The   Mid- 


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Str.  Mackenzie  River  Below  Smith  Rapids 


The  Smith  Rapids 


DOWN  THE  MACKENZIE  RIVER  29 

night  Sun  and  the  Grahame  had  both  been  typical  river 
steamers,  flat-bottomed  with  shallow  draft  and  with  pad- 
dle wheels  at  the  stern.  The  Wrigley  was  smaller,  was 
built  much  like  an  ocean-going  ship  and  had  a  screw  pro- 
peller. It  was  then  believed  by  many  that  only  a  spe- 
cially seaworthy  ship  with  a  screw  propeller  could  safely 
cross  Slave  Lake,  a  great  body  of  water  subject  occasion- 
ally to  violent  gales.  There  is  probably  some  truth  in 
this  view.  The  Wrigley  could  cross  the  lake  almost  at 
will  but  I  have  heard  that  the  more  modern  Mackenzie 
River  now  watches  for  a  fair  opportunity  and  dodges 
timorously  from  shelter  to  shelter  in  her  dealings  with 
the  lake.  Flat-bottomed  stern  wheel  steamers  that  look 
above  water  more  like  a  house  than  a  ship  are  well  enough 
on  rivers  but  difficult  to  deal  with  on  a  lake  or  on  the 
ocean. 

The  Wrigley  had  berths  for  six  passengers  only.  Some 
of  our  fellow-travelers,  such  as  Bishop  Reeve  (the  Right 
Reverend  William  Day  Reeve)  had  to  have  stateroom 
accommodation  because  of  their  dignity — not  that  the 
Bishop  himself  insisted  on  it  but  merely  because  the  rest 
of  us  felt  the  impropriety  of  anything  else.  Others  had 
to  be  in  the  cabins  for  other  reasons.  But  I  was  a  young- 
ster without  dignity  and  more  anxious  for  experiences 
than  for  what  is  called  comfort.  So  I  used  to  sleep  on 
deck  wherever  I  could  and  whenever  I  felt  like  it. 

The  Wrigley  traveled  rapidly  and  was  so  well  man- 
aged that  nothing  special  happened  to  us.  In  crossing 
Slave  Lake  we  were  out  of  sight  of  land  for  some  hours. 
This  gave  us  an  impression  of  the  vast  extent  of  that 
lake,  which  is  intermediate  in  its  size  between  Lake  Huron 
and  Lake  Erie.  If  the  large  lakes  of  North  America  are 
arranged  in  order  of  size,  I  believe  they  are  as  follows: 


30  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

Superior,  Michigan,  Huron,  Great  Bear,  Great  Slave, 
Erie,  and  Ontario. 

Although  we  had  no  adventures  strictly  on  our  own 
account,  we  nearly  had  some  because  a  small  steamer  be- 
longing to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company's  chief  trading 
rival,  Hislop  and  Nagle,  had  run  on  a  sandbar.  Far  out 
in  the  lake  we  met  a  launch  which  told  us  the  news.  To 
help  this  ship  in  distress  we  turned  in  the  direction  of  a 
locality  known  to  be  infested  with  sandbars.  All  of  us 
were  keenly  on  the  lookout  for  the  stranded  steamer. 
Presently  we  saw  her,  changed  our  course  slightly  and 
steamed  directly  towards  her,  until  all  of  a  sudden  we 
realized  that  what  we  had  taken  for  a  steamer  was  only 
a  small  log  lying  on  a  bar. 

It  was  my  first  experience  with  an  atmospheric  condi- 
tion which  is  common  in  the  North  although  not  peculiar 
to  it.  There  is  a  certain  lucidity  and  shimmer  in  the  air 
which  makes  it  especially  difficult  to  judge  distance.  If 
you  are  looking  for  a  ship  far  away  and  see  a  small  piece 
of  driftwood  near  you,  the  bit  of  stick  is  likely  to  be 
mistaken  for  a  ship.  On  certain  occasions  since  then  I 
have  mistaken  for  a  grizzly  bear  a  spermophile  (an  ani- 
mal something  like  a  prairie  dog  or  a  hedgehog).  I  have 
known  of  other  travelers  who  have  mistaken  a  white  fox, 
not  much  bigger  than  a  cat,  for  a  polar  bear.  Nordcn- 
skjold  tells  of  seeing  a  dark  mountain  with  glacier-filled 
valleys  on  either  side  and  of  steering  his  boat  towards  it 
until  fortunately  it  dived  as  he  was  just  about  to  collide 
with  it,  for  it  had  been  a  walrus  and  the  two  glaciers 
had  been  the  tusks. 

We  nearly  ran  aground  on  the  sandbar  towards  which 
we  had  been  led  by  the  piece  of  wood  we  took  for  a 
steamer.     We  did  run  aground  several  times  later  and 


,fc 


DOWN  THE  MACKENZIE  RIVER  31 

had  a  special  way  of  dealing  with  that  situation.  Ordi- 
narily a  ship  such  as  the  Wrigley  will  run  on  a  level 
keel,  drawing  slightly  less  water  forward  than  aft.  But 
we  kept  the  Wrigley  down  by  the  bow  with  a  cargo  of 
shot  in  200  pound  bags.  When  we  ran  aground  her  nose 
would  stick  solidly  in  the  sand  or  mud.  Thereupon  all 
the  crew  and  some  of  the  passengers  would  turn  to  and 
carry  the  shot  from  the  bow  to  the  stern.  This  lifted 
the  nose  of  our  boat  a  foot  or  two  and  released  her  from 
the  grip  of  the  mud. 

Having  been  once  deceived  by  a  log  that  looked  like 
a  ship,  we  were  more  on  our  guard.  Thereafter  ships 
that  were  plain  ships  in  the  eyes  of  some  of  us  were  logs  in 
the  eyes  of  others.  Eventually  we  really  found  the  Eva. 
She  had  not  had  the  forethought  to  carry  a  cargo  of  shot 
in  her  bow  to  keep  it  down,  and  consequently  she  was 
hard  aground  along  the  full  length  of  her  keel.  We 
passed  over  to  her  a  long  hawser  and  pulled  her  off. 

It  must  have  been  difficult  for  Mackenzie,  the  original 
explorer  of  a  hundred  years  before,  to  find  the  place 
where  the  river  leaves  Slave  Lake.  Even  with  an  Indian 
pilot  of  some  experience,  we  had  a  good  deal  of  difficulty. 
Where  it  heads  in  the  lake,  the  river  is  so  wide  that  it 
really  is  a  lake  and  you  cannot  say  exactly  where  lake 
ends  and  river  begins. 

Especially  where  the  Mackenzie  River  leaves  Slave 
Lake,  but  also  elsewhere  in  the  lake  and  at  many  places 
in  the  river,  there  is  danger  of  running  on  sandbars. 
Eventually  when  commerce  develops,  the  channel  will 
be  buoyed  and  even  an  indifferent  pilot  will  have  no 
trouble  in  finding  the  way.  It  is  a  matter  of  great  dif- 
ficulty now.  Memory  will  scarcely  serve  the  pilot,  for 
land  and  landmarks  are  too  far  away. 


32  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

In  rivers  of  developed  commerce,  such  as  the  Missis- 
sippi or  Yukon,  shoals  and  sandbars  are  indicated  by 
buoys,  and  pilot  launches  patrol  the  channels  continually 
to  keep  account  of  their  rapid  shifting.  For  a  sandbar 
that  is  here  this  week  may  be  elsewhere  next  week.  But 
in  1906  a  pilot  passed  down  the  Mackenzie  in  July,  re- 
turned in  August,  and  did  not  see  the  stream  again  till 
next  summer,  by  which  time  many  shifts  of  shoals  and 
channels  had  taken  place.  Consequently,  the  pilots  then 
did  not  try  to  rely  much  on  memory  but  kept  their  eyes 
upon  the  river  ahead  trying  to  tell  by  the  color  and  the 
character  of  the  ripples  made  by  the  wind  or  current 
whether  the  water  ahead  was  deep  or  shallow.  It  is  one 
of  the  consequences  of  this  condition  that  when  one  praises 
a  Mackenzie  River  pilot  it  is  by  calling  him  a  good  judge 
of  water.  One  day  when  we  had  been  running  aground 
rather  frequently,  the  Captain  remarked  to  Ander- 
son that  our  pilot  might  be  a  good  judge  of  water  but 
that  he  must  be  a  pretty  poor  judge  of  land. 

Where  Hay  River  empties  into  Slave  Lake  we  had 
passed  a  mission  of  the  Church  of  England  that  had  a 
fine  garden  and  an  especially  large  potato  field.  I  find 
people  commonly  surprised  when  they  arc  told  about  how 
well  vegetables  grow  so  far  north,  but  they  would  not  be 
surprised  if  they  traveled  through  the  country.  When 
you  are  puffing  and  perspiring  at  a  temperature  above  90 ° 
in  the  shade,  the  rapid  growth  of  potatoes  seems  no  more 
remarkable  than  the  thickness  of  the  mosquito  swarms. 
You  rejoice  at  the  one  a  good  deal  more  than  you  do 
at  the  other,  but  either  ceases  to  be  mysterious  in  the 
sweltering  heat. 

On  the  Mackenzie  River  proper  north  of  Great  £!ave 
Lake,  we  found  flourishing  gardens  at  every  trading  post. 


DOWN  THE  MACKENZIE  RIVER  33 

The  Roman  Catholics  at  Providence  showed  us  straw- 
berries and  various  garden  flowers  in  front  of  the  build- 
ings, and  to  one  side  of  them  waving  fields  of  wheat  and 
barley.  Potatoes  are  cultivated  with  great  success  as 
far  north  as  Fort  Good  Hope,  just  south  of  the  arctic 
circle.  They  could  be  raised  farther  north,  but  under 
present  conditions  it  pays  the  down  river  traders  better 
to  buy  their  potatoes  from  Good  Hope  and  have  them 
brought  in  by  boat. 

The  trading  posts  of  the  Mackenzie  River  are  on  the 
average  about  two  hundred  miles  apart.  Every  one  of 
them  has  a  series  of  buildings  belonging  to  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Company.  Some  of  them  have  churches  or  other 
mission  buildings  and  many  of  them  have  the  stores  and 
residences  of  the  so-called  Free  Traders. 

The  name  Free  Trader  comes  from  the  old  days  when 
the  country  was  not  free  to  trade  in  by  any  one  except 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  and  when  adventurers  used 
to  brave  the  penalty  of  what  was  then  law  and  defy  the 
Company  by  trading  within  its  domain.  When  the  Com- 
pany in  1869  sold  its  sovereignty  to  the  Dominion  of  Can- 
ada, these  Free  Traders  made  a  rush  for  the  deeper  in- 
terior. At  first  they  fared  rather  badly,  for  the  Indians 
of  that  time  had  been  born  and  brought  up  under  the 
guardianship  of  the  Great  Company  and  were  not  easy 
to  alienate.  By  the  time  of  my  journey  this  stage  was 
over  and  some  of  the  Free  Traders  did  as  extensive  a 
business  as  the  Company  itself. 

Up  to  1906  it  had  been  the  policy  of  the  Company  not 
to  help  the  Free  Traders  in  any  way — they  would  not 
carry  them  as  passengers  on  the  Company's  ships  nor 
carry  their  freight  at  any  recognized  tariff.  This  was  a 
shortsighted  policy,  for  it  compelled  the  Free  Traders  to 


34  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

build  their  own  steamers.  It  would  have  been  better  busi- 
ness for  the  Company  to  secure  a  share  of  the  Free  Trad- 
ers' profits  by  carrying  their  freight  for  them  at  a  figure 
that  would  have  been  remunerative  to  the  Company  and 
still  not  so  high  as  to  make  it  pay  better  for  the  small 
traders  to  build  their  own  ships.  Now  when  it  was  in  a 
sense  too  late,  the  Company's  policy  was  being  changed 
by  orders  from  Winnipeg.  Anderson  was  no  man  to 
carry  out  such  orders.  They  were  a  complete  reversal 
of  the  policy  under  which  he  had  risen  from  the  lowest 
rank  in  the  service  to  the  highest  rank.  He  spoke  with 
suppressed  fury  of  the  recreant  officers  in  Winnipeg  who 
had  so  far  forgotten  the  dignity  and  glory  of  the  Company 
as  to  truckle  and  trade  with  the  enemy. 

This  was  a  situation  I  did  not  fully  understand  until 
at  Arctic  Red  River  when  a  young  man  by  the  name  of 
Jaquot  came  aboard  the  Wrigley  and  paid  his  fare  to 
ride  with  us  to  the  last  outpost  of  the  Company,  Fort 
Macpherson.  He  was  a  personable,  well-spoken  young 
man  whose  blood  was  obviously  mainly  Indian.  Ander- 
son received  him  with  surly  looks.  Indeed,  he  could 
hardly  be  said  to  receive  him  at  all,  for  he  avoided  him 
as  much  as  was  possible  on  so  small  a  craft.  At  first  I 
took  this  for  a  prejudice  against  Jaquot's  Indian  blood, 
but  a  little  thought  showed  that  this  was  not  possible,  for 
I  had  already  observed  through  a  month  of  close  associa- 
tion that  Anderson  treated  Indians  and  white  men  with 
an  even  hand.  I  think  it  was  Bishop  Reeve  who  made 
the  situation  clear  to  me.  Anderson  had  nothing  against 
Jaquot  except  that  he  was  a  Free  Trader. 

From  Red  River,  we  went  a  few  miles  north  and  came 
to  the  Mackenzie  delta,  but  were  still  perhaps  a  hundred 
miles  from  the  ocean  proper.     Here  we  steamed  west 


DOWN  THE  MACKENZIE  RIVER  35 

across  the  head  of  the  delta  and  up  the  Peel  River  eigh- 
teen or  twenty  miles  to  Fort  Macpherson  and  the  north- 
ern limits  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company's  domain  at  that 
time.  For  many  years  this  post  had  been  under  the 
charge  of  John  Firth,  an  old  Orkneyman  with  a  grey 
beard  halfway  to  his  waist.  Some  years  before  he  had 
reached  the  age  for  pensioning  and  retirement,  and  had 
gone  out  to  live  in  Winnipeg.  But  Winnipeg  was  not 
far  enough  north  for  him,  and  after  a  year  of  unhappiness 
he  begged  to  be  allowed  back  into  the  Company's  service 
and  had  come  north  to  Macpherson  to  take  charge  again. 
I  am  writing  this  in  1922  and  have  just  learned  that  Mr. 
Firth  has  retired  a  second  time,  but  now  to  live  in  a  little 
house  near  the  post  that  has  been  under  his  charge  for 
the  better  part  of  half  a  century.  Like  most  of  the  north- 
ern men  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  he  wants  to 
spend  his  last  days  where  he  has  spent  his  best  days.  A 
few  of  the  retired  officers  live  in  some  southerly  land, 
such  as  Ontario  or  Scotland,  but  nearly  always  through 
family  reasons.  They  have  children  to  educate.  I  have 
never  known  one  kept  south  by  family  duties  who  is  not 
unhappy  there  and  longing  for  the  North. 

I  said  good-bye  at  Macpherson  to  the  Bishop  and  to 
John  Anderson,  and  the  Wrigley  steamed  back  south.  My 
only  connection  with  the  outside  world  now  was  Elihu 
Stewart,  the  Chief  Forester  of  Canada,  who  was  going 
to  walk  eighty  miles  west  across  the  mountains  to  the 
Bell  River  where  canoes  would  meet  him  to  take  him 
south  to  the  Yukon  River.  There  he  would  get  a  steamer 
upstream  to  Dawson  and  White  Horse  and  a  railway  to 
carry  him  south  from  there  to  the  north  Pacific  Ocean  at 
Skagway.  Partly  because  he  needed  help  and  partly  be- 
cause I  was  reluctant  to  cut  the  last  threads  that  bound 


36  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

me  to  civilization,  I  accompanied  Stewart  along  the  old 
Indian  trail  through  the  thick  brush  on  the  first  lap  of 
his  journey.  In  a  warm,  drizzling  rain  and  among  mos- 
quitoes almost  as  numerous  as  the  raindrops,  we  said 
good-bye  at  his  first  camp,  which  was  pitched  in  the 
spruce  woods  four  or  five  miles  west  from  Macpherson. 
He  would  continue  west  and  south,  but  I  turned  back  to- 
ward Fort  Macpherson  and  the  North. 


CHAPTER  III 

FIRST   IMPRESSIONS    OF    THE    ESKIMOS 

My  head  was  full  of  booklearning  about  the  North.  This 
proved  to  be  mostly  wrong  and  consequently  I  met  a  sur- 
prise at  every  turn.  A  whole  series  of  surprises  came 
when  I  met  the  Eskimos.  I  have  said  nothing  about  them 
before,  but  there  had  been  some  of  them  at  Red  River 
and  there  were  three  or  four  dozen  of  them  on  the  bank 
as  the  Wrigley  steamed  up  to  Fort  Macpherson.  There 
were  white  men  standing  among  the  Eskimos,  and  the 
Eskimos  and  whites  were  about  the  same  height.  I  had 
been  expecting  the  Eskimos  to  be  small  and  was  thinking 
to  myself  that  it  was  a  curious  thing  that  the  Hudson's 
Bay  traders,  Mounted  Police  and  missionary  at  this  place 
should  be  of  such  small  stature.  When  I  went  ashore 
and  shook  hands  with  them,  I  found  some  of  them  were 
taller  than  I,  and  I  am  half  an  inch  under  six  feet.  This 
meant  that  some  of  the  Eskimos  were  big  men.  I  have 
found  since  that  while  Eskimo  women  strike  you  generally 
as  being  smaller  than  white  women  the  Eskimo  men  of 
the  Mackenzie  and  Alaska  are  little  if  at  all  under  the 
average  size,  of  Europeans.  Possibly  the  women  appear 
small  because  they  do  not  walk  on  their  toes  as  do  white 
women  in  their  high-heeled  shoes. 

My  very  first  day  among  the  Eskimos  I  noted  the  free 
swing  of  their  walk  and  their  independence  of  bearing  as 
compared  with  the  Athabasca  Indians  they  were  walking 
and  talking  with.    This  brought  to  mind  what  Macfarlane 

37 

56987 


38  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

had  told  me  in  Winnipeg  and  what  I  had  read  in  Sir 
John  Richardson's  books  about  their  formerly  aggressive 
attitude  towards  the  Indians  and  their  feeling  of  super- 
iority over  them.  This  was  now  confirmed  by  Firth, 
who  told  me  many  stories  of  the  early  days  when  peace 
had  been  but  recently  established  by  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Company  between  the  Eskimos  and  Indians.  Both  people 
felt  secure  enough  so  that  they  met  every  summer  both  at 
Fort  Macpherson  and  Fort  Red  River,  but  neither  trusted 
the  other  completely  and  the  two  kept  their  separate 
camps.  At  that  time  it  had  taken  diplomacy  to  enable 
Firth  to  prevent  acts  of  violence. 

In  one  sense  Firth  was  prejudiced  in  favor  of  the  In- 
dians. His  own  wife  was  half-Indian  and  he  spoke  the 
Indian  language  fluently  but  could  not  speak  the  Eskimo 
at  all.  The  mode  of  thought  of  the  Indians  was,  there- 
fore, familiar  to  him.  He  knew  enough  about  certain  of 
their  characteristics  to  distrust  them  in  one  sense;  but  he 
trusted  them  in  another  sense,  for  he  knew  just  what 
weaknesses  to  figure  upon.  The  Eskimos  were  a  much 
more  enterprising  and  reliable  people  but,  in  spite  of  that, 
he  had  for  them  the  distrust  that  comes  from  only  partial 
understanding.  For  certain  individuals  among  the  Es- 
kimos he  had  unstinted  praise. 

Firth  told  me  especially  about  a  "chief"  by  the  name  of 
Ovayuak,  who  for  enterprise,  reliability  and  a  generally 
attractive  character  was  unexcelled  by  any  white  man 
or  Indian  he  knew.  There  was  another  Eskimo  of  whom 
he  also  spoke  highly,  although  in  a  different  sense.  This 
was  a  sophistica ted  middle-aged  man  known  as  Roxy. 
The  whalers  had  given  him  this  nickname  when  they  first 
came  to  Herschel  Island  in  1889,  at  which  time  Roxy, 
then  a  youngster,  had  secured  a  job  from  one  of  them  as 


FIRST  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  ESKIMOS        39 

cabin  boy.  Firth  advised  me  to  engage  passage  with 
Roxy  from  Macpherson  the  250  mile  journey  to  Herschel 
Island.  A  party  of  Mounted  Police  were  going  down 
also,  but  they,  like  me,  would  be  passengers  in  Roxy's 
boat,  for  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  had  taken  a  contract 
to  transfer  certain  freight  for  the  Police  to  Herschel 
Island  and  they  had  sublet  the  job  to  Roxy.  The  evening 
of  July  30th  we  left  Macpherson  in  Roxy's  whaleboat. 

I  now  know  that  Eskimos  have  no  family  names.  If  • 
a  man's  name  is  John  you  call  him  John,  and  if  his  wife's 
name  is  Mary  you  call  her  Mary.  I  did  not  know  this 
at  the  time  and  so  I  noted  in  my  diary  that  our  party 
consisted  of  the  following:  Captain  Roxy,  Mrs.  Roxy  and 
their  daughter  Navalluk,  about  ten  years  old.  Roxy 
was  a  tall  man,  with  a  roman  nose,  skin  not  darker  than 
the  average  Italian,  with  black  Chinese  hair  like  all  Eski- 
mos, and  no  beard.  Few  Eskimos  have  beards,  but  there 
was  working  with  Roxy  a  short  and  stout  man  named 
Oblutok  with  a  full  but  straggling  black  beard.  He  had 
with  him  his  wife,  whom  I  called  Mrs.  Oblutok,  and  their 
daughter  about  fourteen  years  old.  As  passengers  there 
were  Constable  Walker  of  the  Mounted  Police,  who  was 
in  charge  of  the  freight  we  carried,  and  two  Indians  who 
were  in  effect  his  servants.  Besides  them  there  were  two 
miners  and  I. 

The  miners  were  named  Sullivan  and  Waugh.  Sullivan 
was  a  big,  aggressive-looking,  black  bearded  man;  Waugh 
was  smaller  and  more  retiring.  They  had  turned  up  at 
Macpherson  a  few  days  after  I  got  there  with  a  story  that 
they  had  left  the  gold  country  in  the  Yukon  with  pack 
horses,  had  spent  the  whole  spring  and  midsummer  com- 
ing slowly  across  the  mountains  looking  for  gold,  had 
eaten  up  all  the  provisions  carried  by  the  horses,  had 


4o  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

eventually  turned  the  horses  loose  and  built  a  canoe  on 
the  head  waters  of  one  of  the  branches  of  the  Peel  River, 
and  had  drifted  and  paddled  down  to  Macpherson.  They 
said  they  had  found  no  gold  nor  signs  of  any. 

Everything  went  well  for  150  miles  or  more  down  one 
of  the  branches  of  the  Mackenzie  delta.  For  a  hundred 
miles  the  trees  were  still  large;  then  suddenly  we  came  to 
trees  markedly  smaller.  After  a  few  miles  there  were 
no  trees,  but  only  low  willow-covered  and  grass-covered 
islands  among  which  the  Mackenzie  winds  in  its  innumer- 
able sluggish  channels.  Where  the  branch  we  were  on 
came  out  into  the  ocean  we  stopped  because  the  weather 
was  bad  and  a  heavy  sea  was  running  with  waves  break- 
ing threateningly  over  the  mud-flats.  We  were  towing 
a  boat  loaded  with  freight  belonging  to  the  Police.  Our 
only  motive  power  was  the  sail  on  the  whaleboat.  Even 
in  the  best  weather  it  is  somewhat  dangerous  to  under- 
take a  60-mile  journey  as  this  would  be  from  the  river 
to  Herschel  Island,  towing  a  big  and  heavy  boat  loaded 
down  with  freight  behind  a  small  whaleboat  with  only 
its  sail  for  power.  In  bad  weather  it  was  unthinkable. 
We  remained  in  camp,  accordingly,  for  two  or  three  days 
and  then  we  decided  that  Constable  WTalker  would  stay 
behind  with  the  Police  freight  and  his  two  Indians,  while 
Roxy  took  the  rest  of  us  to  Herschel  Island.  Walker 
favored  this  plan  for  the  sake  of  the  safety  of  his  freight, 
for  we  were  to  send  back  more  seaworthy  boats  from 
Herschel  Island  to  fetch  it.  The  miners  and  I  were  eager 
to  proceed,  for  I  had  promised  Leffingwell  to  be  at  Her- 
schel Island  on  or  before  August  10th.  The  miners  had 
come  with  us,  hoping  to  overtake  whaling  ships  at  Her- 
schel Island  and  to  secure  passage  with  them  for  Nome 
and  San  Francisco. 


Conservative  Old  Man   Wearing  Labrets 


An  Up-to-Date  Young  Man 


FIRST  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  ESKIMOS        41 

It  had  been  known  to  us  at  Fort  Macpherson  that  be- 
tween ten  and  fifteen  whaling  ships  had  wintered  at 
Herschel  Island  or  various  points  east  of  there  and  would 
now  be  about  ready  to  sail  west.  It  was  believed  that 
none  of  them  intended  to  winter,  for  they  had  been  there 
two  or  three  years,  most  of  them.  Some  had  even  tried 
to  leave  the  previous  fall  and  had  been  caught  by  an 
early  freeze-up  and  compelled  to  winter. 

With  the  freight  left  behind,  we  at  first  made  good 
progress  towards  Herschel  Island.  This  was  later  in- 
terrupted by  a  head  gale  and  we  were  so  delayed  that, 
although  we  left  Walker  behind  on  August  4th  and  al- 
though the  distance  was  less  than  sixty  miles,  we  did  not 
sail  into  the  Herschel  Island  harbor  until  12:30  (just 
after  midnight)  on  the  morning  of  August  9th. 

There  were  a  number  of  whaling  ships  in  the  harbor 
and  to  them  we  brought  tragic  news.  The  terrible  ca- 
lamity of  the  San  Francisco  earthquake  had  occurred  be- 
fore I  left  Boston  and  I  had  read  a  good  deal  about  it  in 
the  newspapers.  Never  having  been  in  San  Francisco, 
my  ideas  were  vague  as  to  which  parts  of  the  town  had 
been  destroyed.  I  did  not  realize  the  deficiency  of  my 
information  until  we  told  the  whaling  captains  and  officers 
about  the  earthquake,  when  I  was  immediately  besieged 
with  questions  of  details  as  to  which  streets  had  suffered 
most  in  the  fire,  and  the  like.  They  were  anxious  for 
just  the  facts  I  could,  not  give  regarding  the  fortunes  of 
their  families  and  friends.  The  season  was  getting  late, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  sailing  west,  and  this  tragic 
uncertainty  in  the  news  made  the  ships  all  the  more 
restive.  It  was,  therefore,  only  a  day  or  two  until  the 
first  of  them  began  to  leave. 


42  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

A  stranger  in  the  Arctic  is  met  by  so  many  new  things 
on  every  hand  that  his  impressions  are  at  first  confused. 
Some  changes  come  so  gradually  that  they  are  not  no- 
ticed; others,  while  they  come  suddenly,  come  so  many 
together  that  the  impression  is  not  clear. 

One  of  the  changes  that  comes  too  slowly  to  be  noticed 
is  the  gradual  disappearance  of  the  night.  .When  we  left 
the  railway  at  Edmonton,  there  were  fourteen  or  fifteen 
hours  of  daylight.  On  Slave  Lake  there  were  seventeen 
or  eighteen,  and  not  far  north  of  that  we  reached  a  point 
where  at  midnight  there  is  still  a  glimmer  of  light  in  the 
northern  sky.  If  we  had  been  traveling  with  railway  rap- 
idity straight  north,  the  next  night  down  the  river  would 
have  been  bright  enough  for  reading  at  midnight.  But 
our  steamer's  speed  was  only  eight  or  ten  miles  an  hour, 
which  the  river  current  accelerated  to  twelve  or  fourteen. 
Then  the  Mackenzie  runs  northwest  instead  of  north, 
which  slows  up  the  advance  of  the  midnight  light,  and 
we  stopped  a  day  or  two  at  a  post  every  two  hundred 
miles  to  do  the  business  of  the  fur  trade.  I  did  not  no- 
tice the  increasing  light  enough  to  make  any  entries  in 
my  diary  about  it  until  we  came  to  the  head  of  the  Mac- 
kenzie delta.  We  had  thought  we  might  see  the  midnight 
sun  there,  and  all  of  us  were  on  deck  watching  for  it. 
,-The  daylight  at  midnight  was  as  broad  as  it  is  in  ordinary 
latitudes  five  minutes  after  sundown,  but  the  sun  itself 
was  below  the  northern  horizon.  Then  we  stopped  at 
Fort  Macpherson  long  enough  so  that  even  on  the  later 
journey  to  Herschel  Island  the  sun  did  not  rise  above  the 
horizon,  and  we  never  saw  it  at  midnight  that  year.  Still, 
we  had  several  weeks  of  such  bright  light  that  for  all 
purposes  of  travel  we  got  along  as  well  as  if  the  sun 
had  been  shining  all  night. 


FIRST  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  ESKIMOS         43 

Next  to  the  sun,  we  had  been  looking  forward  to  the 
polar  ice  with  the  keenest  expectation.  The  feeling  was 
somewhat  different,  for  the  reading  of  many  books  had 
taught  me  to  dread  it.  On  the  way  from  the  river  mouth 
to  Herschel  Island  we  were  in  a  gale  when  Roxy  said  to 
us,  "There  is  ice  ahead."  The  announcement  brought 
to  me  almost  a  thrill  of  horror,  for  I  had  seen  so  many 
paintings  of  ships  and  boats  being  buffeted  among  ice 
floes  that  I  thought  it  was  something  like  a  canoe  running 
a  rapid  or  a  ship  being  tossed  among  rocks.  I  soon  saw, 
however,  that  the  Eskimos  were  speaking  with  rejoicing 
about  the  ice.  When  I  asked  Roxy  why  that  was,  he 
said  there  were  several  reasons. 

Having  lived  with  white  men  on  whaling  ships  for 
something  like  twenty  years,  he  knew  what  my  fears 
would  be,  and  so  he  explained  to  me  that  while  white 
men  dreaded  the  ice  the  Eskimos  had  been  living  among 
it  so  long  that  they  were  fond  of  it  and  not  happy  when 
long  out  of  sight  of  it.  He  and  his  party  had  now  been 
several  weeks  up  on  the  Mackenzie  River  and  were  be- 
ginning to  be  hungry  for  the  sight  of  ice.  He  explained 
further  that  it  is  a  great  convenience  when  you  are  sail- 
ing. If  you  want  drinking  water  or  water  for  tea,  go  up 
to  an  ice  cake  and  dip  fresh  water  off  the  surface  of  it. 
This  is  much  less  bother  than  going  ashore,  and  further- 
more the  water  is  fresher  and  better. 

At  first  this  astounded  me,  but  I  have  found  since 
through  long  experience  that  it  is  correct.  If  you  find  an 
ice  floe  so  big  that  the  spray  that  dashes  over  it  in  a  gale 
can  not  quite  reach  the  middle,  then  you  may  be  sure  that 
by  going  to  the  middle  you  will  find  a  pond  of  .the  freshest 
of  fresh  water.  Of  course,  the  polar  ocean  is  about  as 
salty  as  any  other  ocean,  and  just  after  forming  the  young 


44  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

ice  (as  we  call  it)  is  bitterly  salt.  But  during  the  first 
winter  it  gradually  freshens  and  by  the  time  it  starts  float- 
ing around  in  the  form  of  isolated  cakes  the  following 
summer,  it  is  so  fresh  that  the  palate  can  detect  no 
salt. 

But  Roxy  told  me  the  main  reason  for  his  rejoicing 
was  that  the  waves  were  running  pretty  high  and  his  little 
girl  was  seasick,  and  that  when  we  got  in  among  the  ice 
we  would  have  no  more  trouble  with  the  waves.  This 
turned  out  to  be  so.  The  ice  floes  were  scattered.  Few 
of  them  were  bigger  than  a  city  block  in  area  and  there 
were  between  them  half-mile  open  patches  where  we 
sailed  through  smooth  water  though  the  wind  was  blowing 
stiffly. 

This  was  my  first  introduction  to  the  sea  ice.  Through 
many  years  I  gradually  became  more  and  more  fond  of  it, 
until  I  now  regard  it  as  the  Eskimos  do.  When  I  come 
back  to  it  after  an  absence,  I  feel  like  a  forest  dweller 
who  comes  in  sight  of  trees  after  a  long  journey  over  the 
prairie. 

Another  new  thing  to  me  in  the  Arctic  was  the  whaling 
industry,  but  it  took  me  a  long  time  to  get  that  straight 
in  my  head.  From  many  long  narratives  I  eventually  be- 
came able  to  condense  the  story  into  a  brief  statement. 
The  first  whaling  ship  had  come  to  Herschel  Island  in 
1889.  At  that  time  some  of  the  Eskimos  in  this  district 
had  never  <vcn  a  white  man,  although  most  of  them  had 
been  to  Fort  Macpherson  once  or  oftener  to  trade.  The 
next  year  (1890)  there  was  a  large  Heel  of  whaling  ships 
and  they  I  u  hi  In  considerable  numbersof  Alaska  Eski- 
mos who  had  been  on  and  around  ships  for  many  years. 
Learning  from  people  of  their  own  kind  was  much  easier 
for  the  Mackenzie  Eskimos  than  it  would  have  been  to 


FIRST  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  ESKIMOS         45 

learn  from  white  men,  and  it  was,  therefore,  only  a  few 
years  until  they  changed  in  many  ways. 

When  the  first  ships  came,  these  Eskimos  had  no  white 
men's  food  and  their  trading  at  Macpherson  had  been  in 
tobacco,  arms  and  ammunition,  knives  and  other  iron 
goods,  cooking  utensils,  tents  and  clothing,  etc.  The 
whaling  ships  came  laden  with  all  sorts  of  civilized  food 
and  all  sorts  of  trade  goods,  and  the  one  thing  they  lacked 
was  fresh  meat.  At  that  time  the  Eskimos  considered 
meat  and  fish  about  the  only  things  fit  to  eat,  and  it 
was  at  first  difficult  for  the  whalers,  no  matter  what  price 
they  offered,  to  secure  fresh  meat  or  fresh  fish.  It  became 
one  of  their  chief  purposes,  therefore,  to  teach  the  Eski- 
mos quickly  to  like  sugar,  bread,  fruit,  bacon,  and  other 
things  which  could  be  purchased  cheaply  in  San  Francisco 
and  easily  carried  north. 

When  I  arrived  at  Herschel  Island  sixteen  years  later 
this  sort  of  thing  had  already  passed  and  the  Eskimos  had 
become  so  far  acquainted  with  American  foods  that  they 
were  willing  to  consider  them  approximately  one-quarter 
as  good  as  fresh  meat  or  fresh  fish.  By  this  I  mean  that 
in  1906  they  used  to  trade  fifty  pounds  of  fresh  caribou 
meat  for  about  two  hundred  pounds  of  flour  and  other 
groceries.  Some  of  them  still  confined  themselves  largely 
to  a  meat  and  fish  diet  but  there  were  others  who  ate 
considerable  quantities  of  bread,  sugar,  dried  fruit,  etc., 
and  nearly  all  of  them  had  become  passionately  fond  of 
tea  and  coffee. 

In  ordinary  years  the  whalers  had  groceries  in  plenty 
to  sell,  whether  for  meat  or  for  money.  But  in  1903  they 
had  come  to  the  Arctic  outfitted  for  two  years  and  had 
now  been  compelled  to  spend  three  because  of  being 
frozen  in  prematurely  the  autumn  of  1905.    They  had 


46  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

enough  to  eat  for  the  time  being  but  it  was  impera- 
tive for  all  of  them  to  get  out  of  the  Arctic  within  two 
or  three  weeks  if  they  wanted  to  avoid  putting  their  crews 
on  short  rations. 


CHAPTER  IV 

CAPTAIN   KLINKENBERG SEA  WOLF  AND  DISCOVERER 

Although  I  was  now  myself  an  arctic  explorer,  I  was 
ill  grounded  in  the  craft,  whether  theoretically  or  prac- 
tically. As  I  have  said,  my  plan  for  two  years  had  been 
to  go  to  Africa,  and  for  those  two  years  I  had  been  im- 
mersed in  books  about  the  tropics.  I  did  not  even  know 
the  names  of  some  of  the  most  famous  arctic  explorers, 
and  it  is,  therefore,  not  particularly  strange  that  I  had 
never  heard  of  Captain  Roald  Amundsen,  though  he  is 
now  famous.  I  found  him  and  his  ship,  the  Gjoa,  in  the 
harbor  at  Herschel  Island. 

Although  the  Northwest  Passage  had  been  discovered 
in  1847  by  Sir  John  Franklin  and  re-discovered  by  Mc- 
Clure  in  1850,  and  although  ships  had  navigated  the  en- 
tire distance,  no  ship  had  yet  gone  the  whole  way  in  the 
same  direction.  Sir  John  Franklin's  ships  had  come  from 
the  Atlantic  side,  had  attained  a  certain  point  on  the  north 
coast  of  North  America,  and  had  been  wrecked  there.  A 
few  years  later  Captain  Collinson's  ship  had  come  from 
the  Pacific  around  Alaska  and  had  proceeded  far  enough 
east  to  overlap  handsomely  Franklin's  track.  Had  Col- 
linson  wanted  to  proceed  east  to  England  that  year,  he 
could  doubtless  have  done  so,  for  where  Franklin  had 
preceded  him  with  ships  drawing  over  twenty  feet  of 
water,  Collinson  could  have  won  through  with  the  same 
type  of  ship.  He  was,  however,  bent  on  an  errand  of  a 
different  sort  and  his  purpose  took  him  back  west  again. 

47 


48  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

Amundsen  had  conceived  the  plan  of  being  the  first  to 
make  this  voyage  traveling  consistently  in  one  direction. 
He  had  approximately  followed  Franklin's  route  to  where 
it  overlapped  Collinson's,  and  then  he  had  followed  Col- 
linson's  route  until  he  reached  King  Point,  thirty-five 
miles  east  of  Herschel  Island,  the  summer  of  1905.  Here 
he  was  overtaken  by  the  same  unfavorable  ice  conditions 
and  early  freeze-up  which  prevented  the  whaling  fleet 
from  sailing  out,  and  like  them  he  had  been  imprisoned 
for  the  winter.  Now  he  had  come  as  far  as  Herschel 
Island  and  would  already  have  sailed  out  had  not  the 
spring  been  as  unfavorable  as  the  preceding  fall.  Like 
the  whalers  he  had  been  restrained  by  a  pressure  of  ice 
that  hung  heavy  upon  the  west  side  of  Herschel  Island. 

Captain  Amundsen  invited  me  to  be  his  guest  aboard 
the  Gjoa.  I  had  a  delightful  time  learning  from  the  Cap- 
tain and  crew,  but  especially  from  the  first  officer,  Lieu- 
tenant God f red  Hansen,  about  the  Eskimos  of  King 
William  Island  and  about  various  conditions  to  the  east. 
This  was  of  great  interest  to  me,  but  an  event  of  still 
greater  interest  came  about  through  circumstances  as 
dramatic  as  those  invented  by  authors  who  write  books 
of  adventure  for  boys. 

One  of  the  whaling  captains  was  James  McKenna. 
Once  upon  a  time  he  had  been  wealthy.  Some  said  he 
made  his  money  through  whaling  and  others  that  he  had 
made  it  selling  liquor  to  the  natives  of  Siberia  and  west- 
ern Alaska.  However  that  may  be,  he  attained  prosperity 
and  was  said  to  have  owned  ten  or  fifteen  ships.  Perhaps 
because  the  activities  of  the  United  States  Revenue 
cutters  in  Alaskan  waters  made  trading  in  rum  more 
difficult,  his  fortunes  had  gradually  dwindled  until  in 
1905  he  had  left  of  his  whole  fleet  only  the  schooners 


CAPTAIN  KLINKENBERG  49 

Charles  Hanson  and  01  ga.  The  Olga  was  commanded 
by  an  officer  whom  McKenna  did  not  trust,  so  he  decided 
to  promote  to  the  command  Charlie  Klinkenberg,  a  Dane 
who  had  come  to  the  country  originally  as  a  cook. 
Before  this  time  Klinkenberg  had  acquired  at  least  two 
kinds  of  reputation;  one  for  enterprise,  energy  and  fear- 
lessness, and  the  other  for  a  character  not  very  different 
from  that  of  the  buccaneers  of  old,  or  the  Sea  Wolf  of 
Jack  London's  story. 

McKenna,  accordingly,  did  not  trust  Klinkenberg  much 
better  than  he  did  the  deposed  officer.  In  that  connection 
he  got  the  bright  idea  of  removing  from  the  Olga  all 
provisions  except  food  enough  for  about  two  weeks,  think- 
ing that  Klinkenberg  would  not  try  to  run  away  with 
the  ship  if  he  had  no  food  in  it.  This  showed  how  little 
he  knew  Klinkenberg. 

It  was  not  long  till  a  fog  came,  for  fogs  are  numerous 
in  the  polar  ocean.  The  Olga  had  instructions  to  stay 
near  the  Charles  Hanson,  but  when  the  fog  lifted  she 
was  gone  and  was  not  seen  thereafter  up  to  the  time, 
more  than  a  year  later,  when  I  arrived  at  Herschel  Island. 
There  was  a  good  deal  of  speculation  among  the  whalers 
as  to  what  had  happened.  Some  pointed  out  that  Klin- 
kenberg, being  a  better  cook  than  he  was  a  navigator, 
might  have  gotten  lost  unintentionally  in  the  fog  and 
might  have  wrecked  his  ship  and  drowned  himself  and 
the  crew.  Others  thought  he  had  sailed  a  circle  around 
Captain  McKenna,  had  probably  reached  the  Pacific  and 
had  sold  the  Olga,  possibly  in  China  or  in  the  South  Seas 
somewhere,  and  disappeared  with  the  money.  Others 
told  that  Klinkenberg  had  for  years  had  an  ambition  to 
sail  farther  northeast  into  the  arctic  archipelago  and  visit 
some  of  the  islands  beyond  the  ordinary  range  of  the 


50  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

whalers.  He  had  dreams  of  finding  gold  and  hopes  of 
meeting  Eskimos  who  did  not  know  the  present  high 
prices  of  fox  skins,  from  whom  he  could  buy  at  a  great 
profit.  Some  thought  accordingly  that  Klinkenberg  was 
now  in  Victoria  Island  or  Banks  Island  and  would  turn 
up  either  this  year  or  next. 

I  had  barely  assimilated  all  these  speculations  when 
one  day  there  was  great  excitement  at  Herschel  Island, 
for  a  ship  was  coming  in  from  the  northeast.  The  keen 
eyes  at  the  mastheads  of  the  various  whalers  were  not 
long  in  recognizing  the  Olga.  When  she  came  into  our 
harbor  she  had  indeed  a  tale  to  tell.  I  was  at  the  police 
barracks  when  the  Olga  dropped  anchor.  Captain  Klin- 
kenberg came  ashore  at  once  with  some  members  of  his 
crew,  went  to  the  police  and  requested  that  a  statement  by 
himself  and  certain  testimony  of  his  crew  should  imme- 
diately be  taken  under  oath  and  placed  on  record.  The 
statements  amounted  roughly  to  this: 

Klinkenberg  admitted  having  run  off  with  the  Olga  the 
previous  year.  He  had  known  of  an  unguarded  store- 
(  house  at  Langton  Bay,  some  three  hundred  miles  east 
of  Herschel  Island,  where  one  of  the  whaling  companies 
had  a  considerable  amount  of  food.  He  went  there,  took 
the  stores,  broke  up  the  house  and  put  it  on  board  his 
ship.  To  the  police  he  explained  that  his  intention  had 
been  to  pay  for  all  these  things.  He  had  then  sailed  to 
Victoria  Island.  In  the  fall  he  had  been  off  on  a  caribou 
hunting  trip  and  on  returning  to  his  ship  he  had  found 
that  some  of  his  men  had  commenced  to  make  alcohol 
out  of  flour  and  sugar.  This  he  could  not  tolerate  for 
two  reasons:  he  wanted  DO  drunkenness  on  the  ship,  and 
he  did  not  have  the  flour  and  sugar  to  spare.  They  were 
needed  for  food.     The  ringleader  in  the  distilling  was 


CAPTAIN  KLINKENBERG  51 

the  ship's  engineer.  When  told  he  must  stop  making 
alcohol,  he  had  received  the  Captain's  orders  with  de- 
fiance and  had  reached  for  a  gun,  whereupon  the  Captain, 
to  forestall  him,  had  shot  him  with  a  rifle.  An  old  man, 
a  member  of  the  crew,  had  died  of  illness  during  the 
winter;  two  sailors  had  lost  their  lives  by  traveling  over 
ice  that  was  too  thin.  This  was  the  first  version  we  heard 
of  the  tragedies  that  had  cut  down  the  Olga's  crew  from 
nine  to  five  men. 

The  Captain's  witnesses  substantiated  his  story  in  every 
detail. 

McKenna's  ship  was  at  this  time  not  at  Herschel  al- 
though expected  momentarily  from  a  whaling  cruise. 
Some  of  the  other  captains  wanted  the  police  to  arrest 
Klinkenberg  for  having  stolen  the  Olga.  This  the  police 
did  not  see  their  way  clear  to  do,  but  they  told  the  cap- 
tains they  would  restrain  Klinkenberg  if  he  tried  to  take 
the  Olga  away  from  Herschel  Island  before  Captain  Mc- 
Kenna  arrived.  This  Klinkenberg  probably  had  no  in- 
tention of  trying.  He  had  a  whaleboat  which  was  said 
to  be  his  own  property.  Into  that  he  loaded  his  Eskimo 
wife  and  large  family  of  children,  and  sailed  west. 

After  Klinkenberg  got  away,  the  Island  and  fleet  be- 
gan to  buzz  like  a  beehive.  The  story  now  unanimously 
told  by  the  crew  of  the  Olga  differed  entirely  from  the 
one  they  had  sworn  to  in  Klinkenberg's  presence  and  be- 
came one  of  murder.  The  Captain  was  said  to  have  killed 
the  engineer  without  provocation,  and  there  were  various 
dramatic  and  blood-curdling  details.  The  old  man,  whom 
Klinkenberg  had  reported  as  dying  from  illness,  was  said 
to  have  died  in  chains  in  the  forehold,  either  from  freezing 
or  starvation  or  a  combination  of  both.  It  was  said  that 
the  two  sailors  who  lost  their  lives  had  been  the  only  eye 


52  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

witnesses  to  the  killing  of  the  engineer  by  the  captain 
and  that  the  captain  had  deliberately  planned  their  death. 
The  sailors  explained  their  former  testimon}'  by  saying 
that  when  the  Olga  had  come  in  sight  of  Herschel  Island, 
Klinkenberg  had  called  all  hands  on  deck  and  had  made 
them  a  brief  speech  to  this  effect:  "Boys,  you  know  the 
penalty  for  killing  five  men  is  the  same  as  for  killing  four. 
You  know  what  has  happened  to  the  four  of  you  who  are 
not  here  to-day.  The  same  thing  will  happen  to  the  first 
man  who  tells  on  me,  and  maybe  to  the  second  and  third." 
Then  he  outlined  to  them  briefly  what  his  own  testimony 
to  the  police  would  be,  and  advised  them  to  make  their 
testimony  similar.  They  had  done  so,  and  while  Klinken- 
berg was  still  at  Herschel  Island  none  of  them  had  dared 
to  say  a  word.  All  this  and  more  the  crew  testified  under 
oath  after  Klinkenberg  had  sailed  west  from  Herschel 
in  his  little  boat. 

When  the  new  story  got  about  there  was  great  excite- 
ment at  the  island  and  much  talk  of  pursuing  Klinken- 
berg, but  it  was  soon  agreed  that  by  now  he  must  have 
crossed  the  international  boundary,  only  forty  miles  west 
of  Herschel  Island.  There  a  Canadian  police  would  have 
no  jurisdiction,  Alaska  being  U.  S.  territory.  Further- 
more, it  was  clear  that  if  the  American  authorities  wanted 
to  arrest  Klinkenberg,  they  could  do  so  whenever  they 
liked  in  Alaska. 

People  who  do  not  know  the  frontier,  imagine  that 
criminals  can  hide  in  r.uch  places  as  the  polar  regions. 
Nothing  is  more  nearly  impossible.  People  who  live  two 
or  three  hundred  miles  away  are  in  effect  near  neighbors. 
News  does  not  spread  rapidly  but  it  does  spread.  If 
one  Hudson's  Bay  trader  stubs  his  toe  in  January,  the 
trader  down  river  may  not  hear  about  it  till  March,  but 


CAPTAIN  KLINKENBERG  53 

he  will  hear  some  time  and  will  not  only  hear  but  will 
remember  for  years.  That  a  man  you  have  never  seen 
and  who  lives  a  thousand  miles  away  has  a  wart  on  his 
nose  is  well  known  to  you  and  to  every  one  in  your  post. 
In  this  respect  the  whaling  fleet  does  not  differ.  When 
you  are  living  in  a  big  city,  it  seems  reasonable  to  be 
told  in  the  movies  or  in  a  novel  that  criminals  go  into 
"the  northern  wilderness"  to  hide,  but  if  you  know  the 
North  yourself  you  will  know  that  that  is  one  place  where 
hiding  is  impossible.  Klinkenberg's  arrest,  then,  would 
come  whenever  the  authorities  desired,  unless,  indeed, 
he  might  be  able  to  get  "outside"  and  lose  himself  in 
the  really  impenetrable  jungle  of  some  big  city. 

The  Klinkenberg  story  of  romance  and  horror  was  im- 
pressed upon  me  more  strpngly  because  there  was  at  the 
island  a  United  States  Commissioner  by  the  name  of 
Judge  Marsh.  He  consulted  with  me  about  various 
things.  His  theory  was  that  an  American  ship  was  Ameri- 
can territory  and  that  it  was,  therefore,  his  business  to 
investigate  the  charges  against  Klinkenberg.  He  wanted 
somebody  to  act  as  clerk  to  copy  down  testimony  and, 
accordingly,  asked  me  to  come  aboard  the  Olga.  He  took 
testimony  from  all  the  crew.  It  is  the  gist  of  this  testi- 
mony which  I  have  given  above.  Judge  Marsh  later  took 
this  testimony  to  San  Francisco.  A  warrant  was  even- 
tually issued  for  Klinkenberg.  He  was  arrested  by  a 
United  States  Revenue  cutter,  tried  in  San  Francisco  and 
acquitted.  He  may  have  been  guilty  or  innocent.  If 
he  was  guilty,  he  may  have  been  guilty  of  only  a  part 
of  the  charges  made  against  him.  But  the  stories  which 
center  about  this  affair  have  continued  since  then  to  multi- 
ply in  the  North,  until  now  they  form  a  whole  cycle  of 
legend.     Klinkenberg  himself  still  lives  in  the  Arctic. 


54  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

The  last  I  heard  of  him  he  was  in  Coronation  Gulf. 

But  a  story  that  interested  me  more  was  one  that  bore 
every  earmark  of  being  true.  The  only  suspicious  thing 
about  it  was  that  it  seemed  too  romantic  to  be  true. 

The  Olga  was  said  to  have  met  in  Victoria  Island  a 
people  who  dressed  and  behaved  like  Eskimos  but  who 
did  not  look  like  Eskimos.  Some  said  they  looked  like 
Europeans;  others  said  they  looked  like  Jews;  some  said 
that  the  majority  of  them  looked  like  any  other  Eskimos 
but  that  there  were  among  them  a  few  persons  with  light 
hair  and  blue  eyes. 

When  I  discussed  this  story  with  the  whaling  captains, 
I  found  they  paid  little  attention  to  it.  It  was,  however, 
in  the  line  of  my  profession  as  an  anthropologist  and  so 
I  pressed  the  inquiry,  whereupon  the  captains  all  told 
me  that  I  had  better  forget  whatever  I  had  heard  from 
the  white  sailors  of  the  Olga  and  depend  entirely  on  what 
I  could  learn  from  those  Mackenzie  Eskimos  who  had 
been  on  Klinkenberg's  ship.  I  went  to  these  and  found 
that  they  confirmed  in  substance  the  story  which  origi- 
nally came  from  the  white  sailors. 

The  Mackenzie  Eskimos  who  had  been  with  Klinken- 
berg  told  me  that  the  Victoria  Island  Eskimos  had  a 
language  differing  from  theirs  only  in  accent  and  in  a 
few  words.  After  a  little  intercourse,  they  could  converse 
together  easily.  These  strange  people  had  knives  and 
other  implements  of  native  copper,  which  of  itself  marked 
them  off  from  the  western  Eskimos.  They  were  remark- 
ably skilful  at  winter  seal  hunting  and  had  for  that  reason 
the  great  admiration  of  the  westerners.  The  most  strik- 
ing thing  was,  however,  that  several  of  the  Victoria  Is- 
landers looked  to  the  Mackenzie  Eskimos  as  if  they  were 
white  men  in  Eskimo  clothing. 


Tending  Fish  Nets  by  Kayak 


Klinkenberg  and  His  Family 


CAPTAIN  KLINKENBERG  55 

The  reason  for  my  having  come  north  on  a  polar  ex- 
pedition was  that  I  had  once  written  a  paper  upon  the 
history  of  Greenland.  From  my  studies  of  that  history 
I  knew  that  something  like  three  or  five  thousand  Norse- 
men had  been  lost  from  Greenland  about  the  time  of 
Columbus  or  a  little  before.  No  man  knew  what  had 
become  of  them.  Some  thought  they  had  died;  some 
thought  they  had  intermingled  with  the  Greenland  Es- 
kimos and  disappeared;  and  some  thought  they  had 
moved  from  Greenland  to  the  islands  to  the  west  of 
Greenland.  It  was  not  impossible  that  some  of  these 
might  have  penetrated  to  Victoria  Island.  Neither  was 
it  impossible  that  a  few  survivors  of  Franklin's  last  ex- 
pedition of  sixty  years  ago  might  have  escaped  starva- 
tion by  settling  among  the  Eskimos.  No  matter  how  un- 
likely it  might  be,  it  was  not  impossible  that  the  Olga 
had  discovered  the  descendants  of  one  group  or  another 
of  these  lost  Europeans.  All  this  was  fascinating  to 
ponder  upon  and  made  me  watch  all  the  more  eagerly 
for  the  arrival  of  our  schooner,  Duchess -of  Bedford, 
to  pick  me  up  and  carry  me  east  to  where  Klinkenberg 
had  seen  these  strange  people. 

When  Klinkenberg  had  met  these  Eskimos  with  blond 
complexions  and  with  copper  knives,  he  had  noted  the 
blondness;  but  what  had  interested  him  was  the  copper 
and  he  had  tried  hard  to  find  out  where  they  got  it.  About 
that  he  had  learned  a  good  deal  more  than  the  truth. 
One  of  his  stories  was  of  a  mountain  of  solid  copper  in 
Victoria  Island.  This  apparently  fabulous  tale  really 
has  some  foundation,  for  there  has  been  located  since  in 
Victoria  Island  a  hill  that  has  a  boulder  of  copper  in  the 
side  of  it  as  big  as  a  piano.  There  is  of  course  a  good 
deal  of  difference  in  size  between  a  piano  and  a  mountain. 


56  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

Still,  there  are  many  large  tales  that  develop  from  less. 
The  Copper  Mountain  and  the  rest  of  Klinkenberg's 
fabulous  tales  did  not  rob  me  of  much  sleep.  But  the 
problem  of  the  blond  people  never  left  my  mind  until 
several  years  later  when  I  had  the  chance  to  visit  Victoria 
Island  and  see  them  for  myself. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE    WHALING    FLEET    SAILS    AWAY 

A  week  after  I  got  to  Herschel  Island  Captain  Amundsen 
sailed  west,  and  the  whaling  ships  began  to  follow.  They 
were  pessimistic  about  the  ice  conditions  and  left  me 
with  gloomy  forebodings  as  to  the  Duchess  of  Bedford. 
Captain  McKenna  had  come  in  to  Herschel  Island  har- 
bor from  his  whaling  cruise  shortly  after  Klinkenberg 
got  away.  On  August  26th  he,  the  last  of  the  whalers  in 
the  harbor,  was  about  to  sail.  We  thought  he  was  not 
only  the  last  in  the  harbor  but  also  the  last  in  this  part 
of  the  ocean,  for  we  had  seen  all  but  one  of  the  whaling 
ships  start  west.  The  only  ship  we  had  not  seen,  the 
Alexander,  was  supposed  by  the  other  whalers  to  have 
passed  outside  the  island  and  to  have  preceded  them  to 
the  westward.  The  early  morning  had  been  decided  on 
by  McKenna  for  weighing  anchor,  but  shortly  after  mid- 
night a  whaleboat  came  in  from  the  east  bringing  Mark- 
ley,  the  second  mate  of  the  Alexander,  and  the  story  that 
the  Alexander  had  been  wrecked  several  days  before  by 
running  ashore  on  the  rocks  of  Cape  Parry,  three  hundred 
miles  to  the  eastward.  A  few  hours  later  a  second  boat 
came  in,  bringing  Captain  Tilton  and  a  number  of  the 
crew.  Captain  McKenna  now  waited  for  the  rest  of  the 
crew  of  the  Alexander.  They  arrived  during  the  next  two 
days  and  on  August  the  28th  the  Charles  Hanson  and 
Olga  set  sail,  thus  cutting  off  from  the  world  for  a  year 
the  little  arctic  colony  of  Herschel  Island. 

57 


58  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

After  the  ships  were  gone,  the  Herschel  Island  com- 
munity continued  shrinking.  There  is  a  beautiful  har- 
bor, so  it  is  the  logical  wintering  pla*ce  for  ships.  This 
year  no  ships  were  going  to  winter  and  there  was  no 
reason  for  any  white  men  to  stay  there  except  one  or  two 
policemen  to  keep  the  barracks.  Inspector  Howard  had 
the  notion  himself  that  Macpherson,  up  in  the  spruce 
forest,  would  be  a  pleasanter  wintering  place  than  wind- 
swept Herschel  Island.  The  other  policemen  encouraged 
him  in  this  view  on  various  ostensible  grounds  but,  as 
they  told  me,  really  because  of  the  well-known  principle 
that  when  the  cat  fo  away  the  mice  may  play.  Inspector 
Howard  was  called  by  his  friends  a  good  disciplinarian 
and  by  the  rest  a  martinet.  There  was  covert  rejoicing 
in  police  quarters  when  he  sailed  away,  leaving  the  island 
for  the  winter  in  charge  of  Sergeant  Fitzgerald. 

Apart  from  the  police  and  myself,  there  were  only  two 
white  men  on  the  island.  One  was  a  picturesque  charac- 
ter called  Chris  Stein,  whom  I  judged  from  his  name  to 
be  a  German.  I  found  later  that  his  real  name  was  Sten 
and  that  he  was  a  Norwegian,  a  seafaring  man  who  had 
had  adventures  in  many  seas  and  could  relate  them  so  that 
they  lost  no  interest  in  the  telling.  Aboard  ship  he  had 
held  nearly  every  position  from  cook  to  mate,  and  by  his 
own  telling  he  had  been  in  the  navies  of  various  countries, 
as  well  as  in  the  merchant  marine  and  in  whalers.  He 
was  married  to  a  native  woman,  whose  two  brothers, 
Kunak  and  Kakotok,  were  among  the  wealthiest  of  Es- 
kimos. Some  years  before,  these  brothers  in  partnership 
with  two  others,  Ilavinirk  (called  by  the  whalers  Ander- 
son) and  Tulugak,  had  purchased  from  a  whaling  captain 
the  schooner  Penelope,  which  had  once  upon  a  time  been 
one  of  the  finest  pleasure  yachts  on  the  Pacific  Coast. 


THE  WHALING  FLEET  SAILS  AWAY         59 

She  was  built  for  speed,  had  ten  tons  of  lead  on  her  keel, 
and  with  a  good  wind  could  sail  faster  than  any  of  the 
arctic  whaling  fleet  could  go  under  combined  steam  and 
sail — or  so  Sten  told  me.  Through  his  influence  over  his 
brothers-in-law  and  the  other  owners  of  the  Penelope, 
Sten  was  now  practically  master  of  this  craft. 

When  the  Charles  Hanson  was  gone,  carrying  away 
Captain  Tilton  and  the  crew  of  the  wrecked  Alexander, 
Sten  began  to  tell  stories  that  had  not  been  heard  while 
his  former  captain  was  still  in  port.  Those  were  to  the 
effect  that  when  the  Alexander  ran  on  the  rocks  at  Cape 
Parry,  she  did  so  bow  on,  under  full  pressure  of  sail  and 
steam.  The  shock  lifted  her  so  high  out  of  the  water  that, 
while  she  drew  sixteen  feet  regularly,  she  was  now  draw- 
ing only  nine  feet  forward  and  thirteen  at  the  stern.  In 
other  words,  as  Sten  said,  she  was  as  solid  as  a  lighthouse 
perched  on  the  rocks  of  Cape  Parry. 

Sten's  account  ran  that  the  Alexander  had  sailed  on  the 
rocks  in  a  fog  so  thick  that  the  man  at  the  lookout  did 
not  have  half  a  minute's  warning  from  the  sighting  of  the 
breakers  until  the  ship  was  high  and  dry.  The  excite- 
ment had  been  so  great  and  the  fear  of  not  overtaking 
the  whalers  at  Herschel  Island  had  been  so  keen,  that  no 
time  had  been  lost  by  the  Captain  in  getting  everybody 
off  the  ship.  I  think  Sten  said  it  was  only  fifteen  or 
twenty  minutes  from  the  actual  wreck  until  the  whale- 
boats  were  launched  and  under  way. 

Another  point  is  that  the  whaling  ships  carry  insurance 
that  covers  not  only  the  ship  but  also  all  the  whalebone, 
fur,  etc.,  that  have  been  captured  or  purchased  and  en- 
tered into  the  ship's  records.  In  case  of  wreck  it  is 
necessary  only  to  save  the  ship's  papers  and  the  insur- 
ance company  in  San  Francisco  will  be  compelled  to  re- 


60  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

turn  full  value  for  every  fox  skin  and  every  slab  of  whale- 
bone lost.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the  owner  of  the 
ship,  there  is,  accordingly,  no  motive  for  saving  anything 
out  of  a  wreck.  By  these  insurance  conditions  and  the 
excitement  of  the  shipwreck,  Sten  explained  his  state- 
ment that  the  Captain's  cabin  was  full  of  silver  fox  skins 
and  other  items  of  priceless  value,  while  all  the  ship's 
gear,  including  chronometers,  was  still  on  board.  There 
were  even  said  to  be  gold  watches  hanging  on  the  walls 
of  the  cabins  of  the  various  officers. 

Sten  came  to  me  with  this  story,  wanting  me  to  join 
him  on  the  Penelope  to  sail  east  and  plunder  the  wrecked 
Alexander.  But  I  was  still  hoping  for  the  arrival  of  my 
own  ship,  the  Duchess  of  Bedford,  and  although  plunder- 
ing a  wreck  on  the  most  remote  cape  of  arctic  Canada 
would  have  been  a  great  adventure,  I  felt  still  keener  in- 
terest in  the  unknown  Eskimos  of  Victoria  Island  beyond, 
especially  now  that  I  had  heard  from  Captain  Klinken- 
berg  that  some  of  them  looked  like  Europeans.  I  ac- 
cordingly declined  Sten's  offer,  saying  I  would  have  to 
wait  near  Herschel  until  the  actual  freezing  of  the  ocean 
made  it  certain  that  my  own  ship  could  not  come.  I  told 
him  I  would  then  go  with  him  by  sled.  He  said  that 
would  be  too  late,  for  a  trapper  by  the  name  of  Fritz 
Wolki  was  living  only  about  a  hundred  miles  from  Cape 
Parry  and  would  be  sure  to  get  to  the  Alexander  ahead 
of  any  sled  party  we  could  organize.  Wolki  was  the  only 
white  man  living  on  the  north  coast  of  Canada  that  win- 
ter, except  Sten  and  the  rest  of  us  at  Herschel  Island. 

Sten  told  me  he  would  try  to  get  Eskimos  enough  to 
man  the  Penelope.  Of  his  success  in  that  we  shall  learn 
later. 

Th«  other  white  man  at  Herschel  Island  was  Alfred  H. 


Cabins  of  White  Trappers,  Mackenzie  Delta 


The  Village  and  Harbor  of  Herschel  Island 


THE  WHALING  FLEET  SAILS  AWAY         61 

Harrison,  who  has  since  written  a  book  called  "In  Search 
of  an  Arctic  Continent."  He  was  really  in  search  of  this 
continent  but  had  not  been  getting  along  very  well,  and 
through  no  fault  of  his  own.  He  had  a  theory,  which 
would  have  seemed  tame  enough  to  Admiral  Peary  or  to 
any  one  used  to  reading  the  books  of  polar  exploration. 
But  to  the  whalers  and  Eskimos  around  Herschel  Island, 
it  was  exactly  what  they  called  it,  "a  harebrained 
scheme."  The  Canadian  and  Alaskan  Eskimos  are  in 
great  fear  of  the  ocean  ice.  In  winter  they  make  their 
living  upon  it  in  the  vicinity  of  land,  but  seldom  venture 
more  than  five  miles  from  shore,  and  never  willingly  more 
than  ten.  The  whalers  had  little  book  knowledge  of 
polar  exploration,  but  had  been  for  twenty  years  in 
Alaska  where  sledge  travel  on  moving  ice  is  little  under- 
stood, and  they  were  greatly  impressed  with  the  danger 
and  impracticability  of  it. 

With  no  first-hand  knowledge  of  sea  ice,  but  filled  with 
the  lore  of  books,  Harrison  had  come  down  the  Mackenzie 
intending  to  go  from  there  to  Cape  Bathurst  and  across 
by  sled  to  Banks  Island.  Fifteen  years  later,  this  had 
become  such  a  commonplace  that  an  old  Eskimo  employee 
of  mine,  accompanied  only  by  his  wife  who  was  rather 
sickly,  made  the  journey  between  Banks  Island  and  Cape 
Bathurst  without  difficulty.  Harrison,  however,  was  fif- 
teen years  ahead  of  his  time,  and  when  he  proposed  to 
the  whalers  and  the  Cape  Bathurst  Eskimos  that  they 
should  sell  him  an  outfit  and  some  of  them  accompany 
him  on  this  journey,  they  thought  him  crazy. 

Harrison  had  come  North  accompanied  by  Hubert 
Darrell,  a  man  who  had  made  a  good  pioneer  journey 
with  David  Hanbury  from  Chesterfield  Inlet  to  the  arctic 
coast  of  Canada,  then  west  to  the  Coppermine  River,  up 


62  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

that  river  and  across  to  Bear  Lake  and  the  Mackenzie. 

Darrell  was  one  of  the  best  winter  travelers  that  ever 
came  to  the  North,  but  he  knew  overland  travel  only  and 
was  convinced  by  the  whalers  and  Eskimos  that  attempt- 
ing to  accompany  Harrison  over  the  ice  to  Banks  Island 
would  be  suicidal.  From  this  and  from  other  causes  the 
partnership  between  Harrison  and  Darrell  had  broken 
up  the  winter  before  I  arrived  in  the  Arctic.  Darrell  was 
now  trapping  in  the  forest  country  some  two  hundred 
miles  south,  but  Harrison  was  still  on  the  coast  trying  to 
get  Eskimos  to  go  with  him  to  Banks  Island.  By  August, 
1906,  when  I  met  him,  he  had  given  up  hope  of  doing 
anything  that  year  beyond  exploring  the  mainland  east 
of  the  Mackenzie  River  and  mapping  the  great  bodies  of 
water  known  as  the  Eskimo  Lakes.  Eventually  he  ac- 
complished this,  and  you  will  find  notable  differences  be- 
tween the  maps  of  that  section  if  you  compare  those  that 
preceded  Harrison  with  the  ones  he  made. 

Harrison  had  engaged  for  the  winter  the  family  of  Ka- 
kotok,  Sten's  brother-in-law  and  part  owner  of  the  Pene- 
lope. At  first  there  had  been  some  thought  of  using  the 
Penelope,  but  when  Captain  Tilton  came  to  Herschel  Is- 
land with  the  whaleboats  saved  from  the  wreck  of  the 
Alexander,  Harrison  bought  one  of  these  and  decided  to 
use  it  to  carry  him  to  the  Eskimo  Lake  country.  He  in- 
vited me  to  take  passage  in  this  boat  with  him  as  far  east 
as  I  cared  to  go,  and  to  spend  the  winter  with  him  if  I 
liked.  I  did  not  dare  to  go  beyond  Shingle  Point,  how- 
ever, but  took  the  chance  to  go  that  far.  1  left  a  memo- 
randum with  the  police  at  Herschel  Island  to  give  to  the 
Duchess  of  Bedford,  should  she  come,  telling  her  to  pick 
me  up  at  Shingle  Point  if  she  was  going  to  proceed  farther 
east  that  year. 


THE  WHALING  FLEET  SAILS  AWAY         63 

My  journey  with  Harrison  from  Herschel  Island  to 
Shingle  Point  was  merely  a  fifty-mile  boat  voyage  with- 
out adventure.  He  pitched  camp  for  a  few  days  on  the 
sandspit  there  for  fishing  purposes,  and  partly  also  with  a 
friendly  desire  to  wait  around  to  see  if  I  would  not  change 
my  mind  about  taking  a  chance  with  the  Eskimos.  He 
argued  that  the  season  was  now  so  late  that  the  Duchess 
was  not  likely  to  come  and  that  I  had  better  go  with  him 
east.  He  had  half  a  dozen  sacks  of  flour  and  several 
other  items  of  white  men's  fare,  and  his  offer  to  share 
these  with  me  was  a  generous  one  from  the  point  of  view 
of  any  ordinary  white  man,  for  no  one  who  has  not  lived 
with  the  Eskimos  in  their  houses  and  on  their  food  is 
likely  to  think  in  advance  that  it  is  going  to  be  pleasant. 
I  did  not  think  that  it  was  going  to  be  exactly  pleasant, 
but  I  told  Harrison  that  in  case  my  ship  did  not  come 
I  had  made  up  my  mind  to  live  as  an  Eskimo  with  the 
Eskimos  for  the  purpose  of  learning  their  language  and 
customs  and  becoming  as  intimate  with  them  as  possible. 
You  can  never  live  in  your  own  house  as  a  neighbor  to 
people  of  a  strange  race  and  expect  to  get  an  intimate 
view  of  their  lives  through  visiting  them  no  matter  how 
frequently. 

On  September  3rd  Harrison's  whaleboat  and  five  others 
owned  by  Eskimos  sailed  east  from  Shingle  Point,  and  I 
began  my  apprenticeship  at  living  as  an  Eskimo  among 
the  Eskimos. 


CHAPTER  VI 

LEARNING   TO  LIVE   AS   AN   ESKIMO — ON   A   DIET   OF   FISH 

WITHOUT   SALT 

Our  village  at  Shingle  Point  that  fall  was  never  for  long 
of  any  one  size.  It  was  a  tent  village.  Sometimes  there 
were  only  three  or  four  tents  and  sometimes  there  were 
thirteen  or  fourteen,  for  people  kept  going  and  coming. 
Mostly  the  Eskimos  were  on  their  way  from  Herschel 
Island  to  some  point  east  of  us  on  the  coast  or  on  some 
branch  of  the  Mackenzie  delta  where  they  intended  to 
spend  the  winter.  Those  who  chose  the  coast  would  be 
for  that  winter  fishermen  exclusively,  for  seals  are  not 
found  in  any  number  so  near  the  Mackenzie  on  account 
of  the  fresh  water. 

The  Mackenzie  is  almost  as  large  a  river  as  the  Missis- 
sippi and  brings  down  so  much  fresh  water  that  ships  at 
sea,  even  out  of  sight  of  land,  can  drop  their  buckets 
overboard  and  dip  up  good  drinking  water.  Wc  estimate 
that  Shingle  Point  is  about  twenty  miles  west  of  the 
Mackenzie  (there  is  no  certain  line  where  a  river  delta 
ends  and  the  ocean  proper  begins)  and  still  the  water  in 
the  ocean  outside  our  camp  was  commonly  as  fresh  as 
in  a  mountain  brook.  At  King  Point,  fifteen  miles  west 
of  us,  it  was  fresh  about  half  the  time,  and  even  at 
Herschel  Island,  more  than  sixty  miles  west  of  the  Mac- 
kenzie, it  was  likely  to  be  fresh  0  rly  so  whenever 
there  was  a  protracted  calm  or  when  the  wind  blew  from 

the  east. 

64 


LEARNING  TO  LIVE  AS  AN  ESKIMO         65 

The  Eskimos  going  up  the  Mackenzie  expected  to  live 
partly  by  fishing  and  partly  by  hunting  moose,  rabbits 
and  ptarmigan.  Those  who  left  their  boats  on  the  coast 
and  traveled  inland  by  pack  dog  towards  the  mountains 
expected  to  live  mainly  on  caribou,  with  an  occasional 
mountain  sheep  in  some  places  and  ptarmigan  everywhere. 
No  matter  where  they  lived,  these  hunters  were  also  going 
to  trap  for  the  skins  of  various  animals.  In  the  Mac- 
kenzie delta  they  would  get  beaver,  marten,  mink,  lynx 
and  the  various  foxes — silver,  cross,  red,  blue  and  white. 

Most  valuable  of  all  these  skins  is  that  of  the  silver 
fox,  worth  at  that  time  as  much  as  five  hundred  dollars 
even  to  the  Eskimos  and  a  great  deal  more  than  that  to 
the  traders  who  dealt  with  them.  The  cross  and  red 
foxes  are  more  numerous  and  therefore  less  valuable 
members  of  the  same  family.  There  may  be  cross,  red 
and  silver  foxes  in  one  litter.  But  the  white  and  blue 
foxes  are  only  distant  cousins  of  the  others  and  are  little 
more  than  half  the  size.  Just  as  red,  cross  and  silver 
may  belong  to  one  litter,  so  the  blue  and  white  may  be- 
long to  one  litter.  On  the  arctic  coast  there  are  about 
a  hundred  white  foxes  for  one  blue  fox.  Among  the  dark 
foxes,  the  silver  are  the  rarest  and  the  reds  the  most 
common.  There  are  perhaps  four  or  five  silver  foxes  to 
a  hundred  reds.  Of  course,  the  silver  foxes  are  of  varying 
grades,  approaching  more  and  more  closely  to  cross  fox, 
and  it  may  be  that  the  ratio  of  perfect  silver  foxes  (which 
are  called  black  foxes)  to  the  red  is  not  far  from  the 
one  to  a  hundred  ratio  which  applies  to  blue  and  white. 

We  were  all  going  to  trap  foxes  later  in  the  year,  but 
just  after  Harrison  left  us  our  energies  were  bent  on  fish- 
ing. Some  years  earlier  caribou  had  been  in  the  habit  of 
coming  down  to  the  coast  frequently,  but  the  Eskimos  told 


66  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

me  that  during  the  last  few  years  they  had  been  so  much 
hunted  by  natives  in  the  employ  of  the  whalers  that  none 
were  to  be  expected  now  north  of  the  mountains,  which 
were  twenty  or  thirty  miles  inland. 

At  Shingle  Point  we  were  looking  forward  to  a  winter 
of  nothing  to  eat  but  fish.  In  recent  years  the  Eskimos 
had  been  able  to  buy  from  the  ships  all  the  groceries 
they  wanted,  but  they  had  never  wanted  very  much.  In 
fact,  the  whalers  had  been  coaxing  and  almost  forcing 
the  Eskimos  to  eat  groceries  so  as  to  get  from  them  in 
exchange  more  fresh  meat  and  fish  to  use  on  shipboard. 
This  year  the  condition  was  entirely  different.  The 
whalers  had  been  compelled  by  the  accident  of  an  early 
freeze-up  to  spend  the  previous  winter  in  the  Arctic.  The 
summer  of  1906  they  were  so  short  of  groceries  that  none 
of  the  Eskimos  had  been  able  to  buy  any  appreciable 
quantity. 

There  had  been  the  expectation  that  one  or  two  ships 
would  come  in  from  the  west,  and  we  had  all  been  hoping 
to  buy  from  them.  Mr.  Harrison  had  had  the  forethought 
to  wheedle  some  groceries  out  of  one  of  the  whalers  before 
they  had  given  up  hope  of  a  western  ship  coming  in. 
That  is  how  he  came  to  have  the  flour  and  other  things 
I  have  mentioned.  I  did  not  try  to  buy  anything,  for  I 
was  at  first  expecting  my  own  ship  any  day.  The 
Eskimos  had  tried  their  best  to  buy,  but  had  been  able 
to  get  nothing  except  tea  and  a  little  flour.  The  flour 
they  had  secured  from  Captain  McKenna  and  that  only 
because  some  gasoline  had  been  spilt  upon  two  or  three 
dozen  sacks  and  they  were  fairly  soaked  and  reeking  with 
it.  The  Eskimos  I  was  living  with  had  secured  a  few  of 
these  sacks  and  occasionally  they  used  to  make  some 
pancakes  or  doughnuts  fried  in  seal  oil.     I  had  as  yet  a 


LEARNING  TO  LIVE  AS  AN  ESKIMO         67 

strong  prejudice  against  seal  oil.  Although  that  pre- 
judice was  strong,  I  found  the  gasoline  taste  even  more 
disagreeable.  And  for  a  special  reason  the  fish,  which 
was  the  main  item  of  diet,  was  to  me  most  distasteful 
of  all. 

I  grew  up  with  two  main  food  prejudices.  I  cannot 
remember  the  time  when  I  did  not  hear  my  mother  ex- 
plain to  the  neighbor  women  that  I  could  neither  drink 
chocolate  nor  eat  fish.  I  do  not  remember  what  reason 
she  assigned  for  my  inability  to  drink  chocolate,  but  I 
remember  well  how  she  used  to  explain  that  my  unwill- 
ingness to  eat  fish  had  its  reason  in  the  famine  which  came 
on  our  frontier  community  when  I  was  in  my  first  year. 
The  cows  had  died  and  there  had  been  no  milk,  and  she 
had  been  compelled  to  feed  me  on  boiled  fish  made  into 
a  sort  of  mush.  She  used  to  say,  and  the  neighbor  women 
used  to  agree  with  her,  that  it  was  no  wonder  I  had  ac- 
quired a  prejudice  against  fish.  It  was  taken  for  granted 
by  them,  by  my  mother  and  by  me  that  this  inability  to 
eat  fish  would  mark  me  throughout  life.  In  school  and 
college,  at  boarding  houses  and  private  dinners,  I  always 
omitted  the  fish  course  and  always  used  to  explain  that  I 
differed  from  ordinary  people  in  my  inability  to  eat  fish. 
Similarly,  I  avoided  chocolate  until  I  was  something  like 
twenty.  I  cannot  remember  now  how  it  came  about,  but 
either  inadvertently  or  as  an  experiment  I  tasted  choco- 
late and  found  to  my  surprise  that  it  was  not  bad.  Grad- 
ually I  got  to  like  chocolate  but  the  abhorrence  of  fish 
persisted.  I  used  to  taste  fish  gingerly  once  or  twice  a 
year.  This  was  usually  done  in  connection  with  the 
stories  I  was  telling  of  how  disagreeable  it  was;  it  gave 
effective  emphasis  to  my  stories  if  I  grimaced  at  the  diffi- 
culty of  swallowing  even  the  tiniest  bit  of  fish. 


68  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

But  now  I  was  face  to  face  with  a  winter  of  nothing 
but  fish — fish  without  salt  or  tea  or  anything  else.  The 
gasoline  flour  would  soon  give  out  if  we  ate  any  of  it. 
The  Eskimos  had  about  half  enough  tea  to  last  the  winter. 
They  were  exceedingly  fond  of  tea  and  I  did  not  care 
for  it,  so  that  from  the  first  I  voluntarily  left  that  all  to 
them  and  lived  on  fish  and  wTater.  There  are  no  more 
A  hospitable  people  in  the  world  than  the  Eskimos,  and 
they  never  allowed  a  meal  to  pass  without  trying  to  coax 
me  into  drinking  tea.  But  as  the  taste  had  no  attraction 
for  me,  I  was  easily  able  to  resist.  I  always  did  prefer 
water  to  any  concocted  drink. 

As  to  the  absence  of  salt,  that  was  due  to  an  oversight. 
Had  I  thought  of  asking  for  it,  Harrison  would  have 
given  me  some  before  he  left.  One  reason  why  I  did 
not  ask  him  may  have  been  my  subconscious  idea  that 
I  could  secure  salt  by  boiling  down  sea  water.  At 
Shingle  Point  this  was  ordinarily  not  possible,  because 
the  ocean  was  not  salty.  However,  there  was  an  occa- 
sional westerly  gale  which  brought  the  salt  ocean  to 
Shingle  Point.  On  such  occasions  I  took  potfuls  of  brine 
and  boiled  it  down  to  a  thick  scum  on  the  bottom  of  the 
pot.  Thereby  I  learned  some  chemistry,  for  the  taste 
was  not  particularly  sally.  It  was  rather  bitter,  for  (as 
the  chemists  tell  us)  the  sea  contains  a  great  many 
strong  tasting  substances  besides  ordinary  table  salt. 

I  used  to  write  pages  in  my  diary  about  my  troubles 
with  the  fish  diet,  and  a  continual  refrain  was  that  it 
would  not  be  so  bad  if  I  only  had  salt.  I  used  to  get  up 
early  in  the  morning  and  go  hunting  inland.  To  meet 
a  caribou  that  had  wandered  down  from  the  mountains 
l  less  than  one  chance  in  a  hundred;  although  I 
hunted  day  after  day  I  nev<  r  saw  a  caribou  or  sign  of 


LEARNING  TO  LIVE  AS  AN  ESKIMO         69 

any.  But  that  was  not  why  I  was  hunting.  I  was  trying 
to  get  up  an  appetite.  I  would  commonly  start,  without 
breakfast,  at  any  time  from  five  to  nine  in  the  morning 
and  would  walk  until  from  four  to  six  in  the  afternoon. 
When  the  Eskimos  saw  me  coming  across  the  hills  to- 
wards camp,  if  was  the  regular  job  of  Navalluk,  the  little 
ten-year-old  daughter  of  Roxy,  to  pick  out  a  salmon 
trout  just  fresh  from  the  water  and  weighing  about  a 
pound  and  a  half.  She  would  clean  it  and  put  it  on  a 
spit  beside  the  camp  fire  and  have  it  beautifully  roasted 
against  my  arrival.  Had  I  been  a  normal  person  fond 
of  fish  I  should  have  found  it  delicious.  As  a  matter  of 
fact  I  used  to  nibble  chiefly  at  those  parts  that  had  been 
burnt  nearly  to  a  crisp  in  the  roasting,  leaving  untasted 
what  another  would  have  eaten  by  preference. 

But  gradually  and  almost  without  noticing  it,  I  began 
to  eat  more  and  more  of  the  fish,  until  at  the  end  of  ten 
days  or  so  I  was  eating  square  meals.  For  a  while  it 
was  only  the  best  fish  specially  prepared,  but  in  another 
week  or  two  I  began  to  join  the  Eskimos  at  their  potfuls 
of  boiled  fish.  They  told  me  that  fish  heads  were  best 
of  all,  but  this  I  could  not  believe,  and  it  was  not  until 
midwinter  that  I  finally  decided  to  try.  I  found  then 
that  they  were  right  and  have  since  agreed  that  the  heads 
are  the  best  parts  of  most  fishes.  Later  I  came  to  find 
that  this  applies  to  caribou  no  less,  and  I  am  now  of  the 
opinion  that  heads  generally  are  the  best  parts  of  ani- 
mals, or  at  least  seem  so  to  people  who  are  living  on  an 
exclusively  meat  diet.  The  northern  meat-eating  Indians 
all  agree  with  the  Eskimos  in  this,  and  so  do  all  those 
white  men  I  know  who  have  ever  lived  for  long  periods 
on  a  hundred  per  cent,  meat  diet. 

Our  fishing  methods  at  Shingle  Point  were  peculiar. 


70  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

The  fish  that  were  running  in  the  largest  numbers  are 
called  by  the  whalers  "white  fish,"  though  they  do  not 
resemble  closely  our  commercial  whitefish.  The  Eskimos 
call  them  kaktat.  The  water  was  clear  and  the  fish  were 
wary.  They  could  not  be  netted  in  daytime  unless  there 
was  a  heavy  surf  rolling  in  from  the  sea  that  muddied 
up  the  water  so  they  could  not  see  the  nets. 

As  I  remember  them,  the  nets  we  used  were  about  three 
feet  wide  and  about  thirty  feet  long.  Sometimes  they 
were  set  out  by  Eskimos  in  kayaks,  but  ordinarily  we 
used  a  long  stick  to  shove  them  out.  The  Eskimos  would 
find  a  straight-grained  log  of  driftwood  on  the  beach. 
This  they  would  split  and  adze  into  rods  each  the  full 
length  of  the  log  and  two  or  three  inches  in  diameter. 
They  would  then  splice  several  of  the  rods  together,  end 
on  end,  making  a  pole  perhaps  sixty  and  even  a  hundred 
feet  long  and  so  weak  that  it  could  not  stand  its  own 
weight.  If  you  picked  it  up  by  the  middle  the  two  ends 
would  remain  on  the  ground,  and  if  you  raised  the  middle 
high  enough  the  rod  would  break.  These  rods  were 
dragged  about  the  beach  rope-fashion,  and  when  we  came 
to  places  where  nets  were  to  be  set  we  would  slip  upon 
the  tip  of  the  pole  a  loop  that  was  fast  to  one  end  of 
the  net  and  shove  it  out  upon  the  surface  of  the  water. 
In  that  way  the  net  was  set  so  that  the  outer  end  was 
perhaps  sixty  or  seventy  feet  from  the  beach  and  the 
near  end  thirty  or  forly  feet  away. 

The  catch  varied  on  different  nights.  When  the  run 
was  good,  two  or  three  men  could  be  kept  busy  tending 
two  or  three  nets.  You  would  pull  in  a  net  and  find  the 
fish  stuck  in  it  almost  as  thick  as  they  could  be.  There 
was  not  a  fish  in  every  mesh,  but  a  person  seeing  the 
quivering  mass  pulled  in  would  have  said  that  there  was. 


LEARNING  TO  LIVE  AS  AN  ESKIMO         71 

We  would  pull  the  fish  out  as  quickly  as  we  could  and 
throw  them  in  a  pile  inland,  then  shove  out  the  net  and 
walk  to  the  second  net.  We  would  similarly  empty  that 
and  then  pull  in  the  third  net.  By  the  time  that  was 
done  we  would  go  back  to  the  first  net,  pull  it  in  and 
find  it  just  as  full  as  it  was  the  time  before.  We  never 
counted  the  fish  but  I  should  say  that  on  a  good  night 
three  or  four  of  us  caught  between  one  and  two  thou- 
sand, giving  from  fifteen  hundred  to  three  thousand 
pounds  of  food. 

The  hardest  work  of  the  women  came  during  the  day. 
With  half-moon-shaped  steel  knives  as  sharp  as  razors 
they  cut  open  the  fish,  cleaned  them,  removed  the  back- 
bone and  hung  up  the  rest  to  dry.  This  was  done 
when  the  run  of  fish  was  not  very  rapid.  When  large 
quantities  were  being  caught,  the  women  did  not  have 
time  to  remove  the  backbones,  but  merely  cleaned  the 
fish  and  threw  them  into  enclosures  made  log  cabin 
fashion  out  of  pieces  of  driftwood.  When  the  fish  in  each 
of  these  boxes  were  three  or  four  feet  deep,  the  whole 
thing  would  be  roofed  over  with  a  pile  of  logs,  thus  fur- 
nishing adequate  protection  from  dogs  and  foxes  and 
indeed  from  any  animal  except  a  polar  bear.  Even  from 
bears  these  caches  were  safe  so  long  as  the  fish  were  per- 
fectly fresh,  for  a  polar  bear  does  not  hunt  fish  and  does 
not  seem  to  recognize  the  smell  of  fresh  fish  as  the  smell 
of  food.  But  caches  containing  "high"  fish  will  be 
broken  into  by  bears — probably  because  all  rotten  meats 
and  rotten  fishes  smell  much  alike. 

I  had  read  in  books  that  the  Eskimos  eat  their  food 
raw,  but  found  little  of  this.  The  Mackenzie  people  are 
no  more  likely  to  eat  a  fresh  fish  raw  than  we  are  to  eat 
a  beefsteak  raw.     I  have  seen  butchers  and  cooks  eat 


72  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

small  pieces  of  raw  steak  and  similarly  I  have  seen 
Eskimos  on  rare  occasions  take  a  mouthful  of  raw  fresh 
fish. 

But  fish  in  another  condition  they  do  eat  raw.  On 
account  of  the  difficulty  of  netting  in  daylight  in  clear 
weather,  there  is  little  fishing  on  Shingle  Point  during 
the  midsummer  while  the  sun  never  sets.  The  natives, 
therefore,  look  forward  eagerly  to  the  coming  of  the  dark 
nights.  A  few  fish  are  summer-caught,  however,  and 
they  are  put  in  bins  and  protected  from  the  sun  by  piles 
of  logs.  Although  it  is  extremely  hot  in  summer  when 
you  are  twenty  or  thirty  miles  inland  (perhaps  80  °  or 
90 °  in  the  shade),  the  temperature  on  a  sandspit  sur- 
rounded by  ocean  water  as  Shingle  Point  was,  is  seldom 
above  60  °  or  70  °,  and  frequently  around  40  °  or  50  °. 
Therefore,  the  fish  did  not  decay  rapidly,  but  became 
high,  somewhat  in  the  sense  in  which  venison  and  game 
are  allowed  to  become  high  in  our  markets.  Fish  that 
has  a  high  or  gamey  taste  is  seldom  cooked  and  indeed 
seldom  eaten  at  all  during  the  summer.  But  when  winter 
comes  and  the  fish  are  frozen,  they  are  sometimes 
brought  into  the  house  in  that  condition.  An  armful  of 
them  is  thrown  upon  the  floor  and  allowed  to  lie  there 
until  they  are  half-thawed,  so  that  they  are  about  of  the 
consistency  of  ice  cream — they  are  still  frozen,  but 
nevertheless  are  so  soft  you  can  easily  cut  them  with  a 
knife  or  bite  chunks  out  of  them.  At  that  stag*  the  skin 
is  stripped  off  and  they  are  eaten  by  the  i  is  very 

much  as  we  cat  corn  on  the  col).  The  backbone  and 
ribs  form  the  core  and  are  thrown  away  or  given  to  the 
dogs,  as  we  reject  the  cob  after  eati      the  corn. 

At  first  1  was  horrif  seeing  people  eating  high, 

raw  fish.    But  when  I  came  to  think  of  it,  it  did  not  seem 


LEARNING  TO  LIVE  AS  AN  ESKIMO         73 

any  more  remarkable  that  some  people  should  like  high 
fish  than  that  some  people  should  like  "strong"  cheeses 
or  high  venison  and  pheasants.  Neither  is  it  any  more 
remarkable  that  the  Eskimos  eat  raw  fish  than  that  the 
Japanese  and  Norwegians  do  so.  Furthermore,  there  is 
no  essential  difference  between  eating  raw  fish  and  raw 
oysters.  After  all,  what  is  the  difference  between  eating 
a  thing  raw  and  eating  a  thing  "rare?"  When  you  order 
a  big  steak  "underdone"  you  get  a  little  meat  on  the 
outside  that  is  cooked  and  a  lot  of  meat  on  the  inside 
that  is  raw.  If  you  try  on  your  friends  the  experiment 
of  just  calling  raw  meat  rare,  you  will  see  that  it  helps 
a  lot  in  making  it  easier  to  swallow. 

At  least  it  helped  with  me.  By  the  time  I  had  gone 
through  all  the  above  reasoning  (which  it  did  not  occur 
to  me  to  do  for  several  weeks)  I  one  day  tried  the 
frozen  fish  and  found  it  not  so  bad.  Each  time  I  tried 
it  I  liked  it  a  little  better,  and  eventually  I  got  so  fond 
of  it  that  I  agreed  with  the  Eskimos  in  preferring  it  to 
cooked  fish  "for  a  change." 

I  had  not  yet  been  thoroughly  broken  in  to  the  fish 
diet  nor  had  I  become  completely  used  to  many  other 
strange  features  of  my  life  with  the  Eskimos,  when  one 
day  a  schooner  was  seen  coming  along  from  the  west. 
At  first  I  thought  it  was  the  Duchess  of  Bedford  but  the 
Eskimos  presently  recognized  her  as  the  Penelope.  She 
dropped  anchor  half  a  mile  outside  of  our  camp  and  a 
boat  came  ashore,  bringing  Sten  and  two  of  the  part- 
owners  of  the  Penelope,  his  brother-in-law  Kunak  and 
the  junior  partner  Tulugak.  Sten  said  they  were  on 
their  way  at  last  toward  Cape  Parry  to  make  their  for- 
tunes plundering  the  wreck  of  the  Alexander. 

The  visitors  received  a  jolly  welcome  from  us,  as  all 


7*         HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

traveling  parties  did.  A  part  of  this  welcome  always  was 
a  meal.  To  me  this  particular  one  was  an  especial  feast, 
for  Sten  had  brought  ashore  with  him  some  flour  that 
had  no  gasoline  in  it,  and  some  molasses.  We  had  dough- 
nuts of  exceptional  quality.  I  eventually  got  so  that  I 
liked  the  taste  of  things  fried  in  seal  oil  as  well  as  I 
like  similar  things  fried  in  lard,  but  with  doughnuts 
properly  made  this  is  hardly  a  question.  If  the  oil  or 
lard  is  kept  so  hot  that  it  is  almost  burning,  you  can 
cook  doughnuts  in  either  without  leaving  an  appreciable 
taste.  This  is  especially  true  if  porousness  is  avoided 
by  leaving  out  the  baking  powder,  thus  getting  grease- 
proof glazing  on  the  outside — like  that  of  pretzels. 

At  the  end  of  the  feast  Sten  arose  to  go  aboard  ship, 
whereupon  it  developed  that  there  was  a  hitch  in  his 
plans.  His  Eskimo  crew  had  decided  that  Fritz  Wolki, 
two  hundred  miles  to  the  east  of  us,  must  surely  have 
reached  the  wrecked  ship  by  now  and  that  there  was  no 
point  in  anybody  else  going  there.  Sten  was  of  a  dif- 
ferent opinion.  The  Eskimos,  with  the  greatest  good 
nature,  replied  that  it  would  be  all  right  for  him  to  go 
but  that  they  personally  were  inclined  to  stay.  Some 
would  camp  right  here  at  Shingle  Point,  and  the  rest  of 
his  crew  would  go  inland  to  the  mountains  to  hunt 
caribou.  Sten  became  angry  and  threatened  and  blus- 
tered a  good  deal,  but  without  any  effect  either  in  mak- 
ing the  Eskimos  angry  or  in  changing  their  course. 

Sten  was  of  a  naturally  equable  disposition  and,  fur- 
thermore, knew  the  Eskimos  well  by  now.  He  soon  saw 
the  case  was  hopel<  d  made  them  a  new  proposition. 

This  was  that  a  few  of  them  should  go  back  with  him 
on  the  Penelope  fifteen  miles  up  the  coast  to  King  Point, 
where  Captain  Amundsen  had  left  a  cabin  and  where 


A  Fishing  Camp — Sun-drying  the  Fish 


A  Summer  Camp  Near  Arctic  Mountains 


LEARNING  TO  LIVE  AS  AN  ESKIMO         75 

Sten  himself  had  another  cabin  from  the  previous  winter, 
for  he  had  that  year  been  shipwrecked  near  King  Point 
in  a  schooner,  the  Bonanza.  The  wreck  had  been  partly- 
salvaged,  and  there  was  a  good  deal  of  valuable  prop- 
erty ashore.  The  Penelope  was  now  to  fetch  this 
property  to  Shingle  Point  where  Sten  would  spend  the 
winter  with  us. 

This  would  not  take  more  than  three  or  four  days 
and  a  sufficient  number  agreed  to  help.  Sten  asked  me 
to  join  in  the  enterprise  and  we  sailed  to  King  Point, 
tore  down  his  house  but  not  Amundsen's,  and  loaded  the 
ship  with  whatever  seemed  valuable — lumber,  carpenter 
tools,  ropes  and  the  like.  The  whole  was  landed  at 
Shingle  Point  inside  the  week  and  with  the  help  of  sev- 
eral Eskimos  and  myself  Sten  soon  had  a  comfortable 
house  built.  In  this  he  invited  me  to  spend  the  winter 
with  him,  but  I  declined  again  for  the  same  reason  as  I 
had  declined  Harrison's  previous  invitation.  Learning 
all  about  the  Eskimos  was  my  object  in  coming  North, 
so  I  decided  I  would  live  with  them  and  occasionally 
visit  Sten,  instead  of  living  with  Sten  and  occasionally 
visiting  the  Eskimos. 

From  the  time  Harrison  left  me  at  Shingle  Point  till 
the  freeze-up  several  weeks  later,  we  had  visitors  nearly 
every  day.  Some  of  them  stayed  with  us  a  few  days; 
others  would  arrive  in  the  morning  and  leave  towards 
evening,  or  arrive  in  the  evening  and  leave  in  the  morn- 
ing. This  brought  to  my  notice  the  remarkable  ability 
of  Eskimo  children  to  stay  awake  for  long  periods. 

In  the  summer  time  with  perpetual  daylight,  the  sleep- 
ing habits  of  every  one  in  the  North  are  as  irregular  as 
can  be.  At  Macpherson,  and  in  the  interior  generally, 
it  is  common  to  go  to  sleep  in  the  morning  and  get  up 


76  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

in  the  evening.  This  is  because  the  days  are  extremely 
hot  and  outdoors  work  is  much  more  pleasant  in  the 
slightly  cooler  night  hours.  On  the  coast,  however,  the 
days  are  never  unpleasantly  hot,  so  we  had  no  motive 
for  going  to  sleep  in  the  morning,  and  went  to  sleep 
instead  whenever  we  liked.  With  the  southern  idea  that 
there  is  a  certain  merit  in  regularity  I  used  to  try  to 
sleep  eight  hours  a  day,  but  soon  gave  that  up  and  fell 
into  the  native  way  of  sleeping  when  I  felt  like  it,  some- 
times for  an  hour,  sometimes  for  five  hours  and  some- 
times for  ten.  Not  infrequently  I  would  sleep  for  five 
hours  to  be  awakened  by  the  announcement  that  there 
was  something  especially  good  to  eat,  whereupon  I  would 
join  the  others  in  the  eating  and  then  go  to  sleep  again. 
All  this  is  ordinary  custom  and  perfectly  good  manners 
among  the  Eskimos. 

If  the  sleeping  of  the  grown  people  is  irregular,  that 
of  the  children  is  still  more  so.  This  is  especially  the 
case  because  of  the  arrival  and  departure  of  visitors. 
All  the  Eskimos  for  hundreds  of  miles  around  knew  each 
other  well  enough  so  that  when  a  boat  arrived  there 
always  came  with  it  children  that  were  at  least  familiar 
by  name  to  some  of  the  children  that  were  in  our  camp. 
There  would  be  great  rejoicing  and  great  excitement. 
Before  this  had  time  to  quiet  down  some  family  would 
leave  or  perhaps  another  family  would  arrive,  bringing 
the  further  excitement,  of  parting  with  old  playmates  or 
i  ting  new  ones.  One  of  the  Eskimo  mothers  told  me 
in  this  connection  that  her  eight-year-old  daughter  had 
been  awake  continuously  for  five  days  and  nights,  play- 
ing all  the  time.  This  in1  re  d  me  so  much  that  I 
inquired  from  a  number  of  Other  people  in  the  village 
as  well  as  from  Sten,  and  ascertained  with   reasonable 


LEARNING  TO  LIVE  AS  AN  ESKIMO         77 

certainty  that  several  of  the  children  had  been  awake 
continuously  from  three  to  five  days.  I  have  never  since 
been  at  a  village  similarly  situated,  but  I  have  frequently 
known  Eskimos,  both  older  people  and  youngsters,  to 
stay  awake  as  long  as  two  and  three  days.  Indeed,  I 
am  so  used  to  doing  this  myself  that  I  am  not  likely 
even  to  note  it  in  my  diaries. 

One  day  a  boat  came  from  the  west  bringing  us  news 
of  importance.  The  whaling  ship  Narwhal  had  arrived 
at  Herschel  Island  with  messages  from  the  Duchess  of 
Bedford.  This  news  had  been  so  ill  understood  by  the 
Eskimos  that  I  became  very  anxious  to  go  to  Herschel 
Island  to  learn  the  whole  truth.  The  Eskimos  said  the 
Narwhal  had  gone  off  on  a  short  whaling  cruise  but 
would  probably  be  back  at  Herschel  Island  harbor  by 
now.  It  was  said  she  did  not  have  any  considerable 
amount  of  trade  goods,  but  I  thought  I  should  be  able 
to  buy  from  her  some  flour  and  other  groceries.  It  was 
accordingly  arranged  that  I  should  take  Sten's  whale- 
boat  and  make  a  trip  in  it  to  Herschel  Island  to  get  for 
him  and  me  jointly  a  boatload  of  supplies.  Roxy  and 
Oblutok,  my  companions  of  the  summer  journey  from 
Macpherson  to  Herschel,  decided  they  would  go  with  me, 
Mrs.  Roxy  coming  along  too.  We  sailed  for  Herschel 
Island  and  got  there  without  incident. 


CHAPTER  VII 

HOW  AN  ESKIMO   SAILED  THROUGH   THE   STORM 

At  Herschel  Island  we  found  the  Narwhal  and  on  board 
of  her  the  warmest  sort  of  welcome  from  Captain  George 
Leavitt  and  from  his  officers  and  men.  The  Captain  told 
me  that  his  ship  and  all  the  others,  including  Captain 
Amundsen's  Gjoa,  had  reached  Point  Barrow  without 
much  trouble.  From  this  point  all  the  other  ships  con- 
tinued west  to  the  Pacific  and  south  to  San  Francisco. 
But  as  Captain  Leavitt  found  himself  able  to  half-stock 
his  ship  with  provisions  for  another  winter,  he  decided 
to  come  back  to  Herschel  Island,  for  doing  so  would 
give  him  a  fine  chance  to  catch  a  lot  of  whales  next 
spring.  He  had  hitherto  been  compelled  to  compete  with 
twelve  and  fifteen  ships  but  now  he  could  have  the  whole 
western  Arctic  to  himself  at  the  price  of  merely  the 
slight  hardship  of  wintering  with  a  less  variety  of  sup- 
plies than  he  was  used  to.  He  would  have  to  put  his 
men  on  rations,  but  felt  no  doubt  of  getting  through  the 
winter  all  right,  especially  as  he  hoped  to  engage  a  num- 
ber of  Eskimo  hunters  to  go  south  into  the  mountains 
and  secure  for  him  a  large  amount  of  caribou  meat. 

Captain  Leavitt's  news  of  the  Duchess  of  Bedford  was 
that  she  had  rounded  Point  Barrow  safely.  She  had 
Started  east  ahead  of  the  Narwhal,  but  coming  east  the 
Narwhal  had  pas  ed  her  somewhere  without  seeing  her 
(  probably  in  a  fog),  and  the  Captain  could  not  say  where 
she  would  now  be.  lie  thought  it  unlikely  that  she  would 
get  through  to  us  at  Herschel  Island,  for  the  season  was 

73 


HOW  AN  ESKIMO  SAILED  THROUGH  STORM      79 

so  late  (September  23rd)  that  any  ship  going  out  into 
the  ocean  would  run  the  danger  of  having  ice  form  all 
around  her,  preventing  her  from  getting  back  again  to 
the  safety  of  a  harbor.  The  best  guess  was  that  the 
Duchess  was  wintering  somewhere  near  Flaxman  Island, 
about  halfway  between  Herschel  Island  and  Point  Bar- 
row and  two  hundred  miles  west  of  Herschel  Island. 

Captain  Leavitt  thought  the  thing  for  me  to  do  was 
to  spend  the  winter  where  I  liked,  waiting  for  news. 
Shortly  after  the  freeze-up  Eskimo  sled  travel  up  and 
down  the  coast  would  commence  and  it  would  not  be 
more  than  a  month  or  two  until  news  would  get  to 
Herschel  Island  about  any  ship  that  was  wintering  be- 
tween there  and  Point  Barrow. 

My  main  errand  at  Herschel  was  to  buy  on  behalf  of 
Sten  and  myself  as  much  as  I  could  of  certain  things, 
chiefly  groceries.  Captain  Leavitt  told  me  at  once  that 
he  had  nothing  to  spare  of  most  articles  but  a  little  of 
some  staples.  Of  what  he  had,  he  would  give  me  as 
much  as  I  wanted. 

I  was  at  the  police  barracks  on  shore  when  our  pur- 
chases were  being  loaded  into  the  whaleboat.  On  coming 
down  to  the  ship  I  noticed  that  one  thing  missing  from 
the  list  I  had  requisitioned  was  a  barrel  of  molasses. 
Captain  Leavitt  had  gone  off  somewhere  and  I  asked 
the  Mate  whether  they  were  short  of  molasses.  He  said 
that  on  the  contrary  it  was  one  thing  they  had  in  un- 
limited quantity,  and  he  felt  sure  the  Captain  would  not 
mind  if  he  gave  me  a  barrel  of  it.  The  barrel  was, 
accordingly,  put  in  the  boat.  It  was  not  until  many 
months  later  that  I  found  out  why  Captain  Leavitt  had 
not  given  me  the  molasses  in  the  first  place.  He  had 
intended  to  do  so,  but  had  found  that  when  the  boat 


80  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

was  loaded  with  the  rest  of  my  purchases  it  already  had 
as  much  cargo  as  it  could  safely  carry.  He  had  stopped 
the  men  at  the  last  moment  when  they  were  about  to 
lower  the  molasses  barrel,  saying  that  in  case  of  a  gale 
we  were  liable  to  be  swamped  through  overloading. 

Not  being  much  of  a  sailor  myself  and  having  full 
confidence  in  Roxy,  who  had  a  great  reputation  in  that 
regard  both  with  Eskimos  and  whalers,  I  did  not  even 
suspect  we  were  already  overloaded  as  we  rowed  ashore 
from  the  Narwhal  a  hundred  yards  to  the  beach  where 
some  Eskimo  friends  of  Roxy's  had  in  waiting  for  us 
two  or  three  huge  tubs  filled  with  what  is  known  as 
"blackskin."  This  is  a  favorite  food  not  only  of  the 
Eskimos  but  of  many  northern  white  men.  It  consists 
of  slabs  of  whale  skin  and  attached  a  certain  amount  of 
blubber.  The  skin  varies  in  thickness  according  to  the 
age  of  the  whale  and  according  to  the  part  of  the  body 
it  has  been  taken  from,  but  generally  it  is  from  one- 
sixth  to  one-third  of  an  inch  thick  and  there  may  be  any- 
thing from  half  an  inch  to  several  inches  of  blubber  at- 
tached. I  do  not  know  exactly  how  much  each  tub  of 
blackskin  weighed,  but  I  estimated  later  that  between  it 
and  the  molasses  we  must  have  been  nearly  a  thousand 
pounds  overweight — carrying  three  thousand  pounds  in 
a  boat  that  was  not  really  seaworthy  with  much  more  than 
two  thousand. 

We  started  September  26th.  There  was  a  light  breeze 
when  we  sailed  which  carried  us  a  few  miles  away  from 
the  harbor.  Then  it  fell  a  dead  calm  and  Kay  Foint 
to  the  east  was  still  twelve  or  fifteen  miles  away,  too  far, 
we  thought,  for  rowing.  Accordingly,  we  put  in  at 
Flanders  Point,  which  is  the  landward  end  of  Herschel 
Island  and  a  good  fishing  place. 


HOW  AN  ESKIMO  SAILED  THROUGH  STORM      81 

The  next  morning  Roxy  awoke  me,  saying  that  there 
was  a  fair  wind  blowing  but  that  the  weather  later  in 
the  day  would  probably  be  bad.  To  me  it  seemed  rather 
bad  already.  There  were  periods  of  calm  and  between 
them  squalls  of  strong  wind  with  flurries  of  snow.  Along 
the  coast  just  east  of  us  there  were  several  harbors, 
and  Roxy  and  I  agreed  that  on  so  threatening  a  day  we 
would  not  proceed  beyond  Kay  Point,  for  on  the  thirty- 
five-mile  stretch  from  there  to  Shingle  Point  there  is  no 
shelter  or  any  possibility  of  landing  in  case  of  a  gale. 

Had  we  jumped  into  the  boat  promptly  on  waking 
up,  I  think  all  might  have  gone  well.  The  Eskimos  were 
eating  a  breakfast  of  dried  fish  and  whale  blubber.  Had 
I  been  a  good  Eskimo  also,  I  should  have  shared  that 
with  them  and  we  might  have  been  on  the  road  in  a  few 
minutes.  Thinking,  however,  that  we  could  not  proceed 
beyond  Kay  Point  in  any  case,  I  took  an  hour  to  fry  a 
small  piece  of  pork  that  Captain  Leavitt  had  given  me 
and  made  a  meal  of  that.  When  we  finally  started  the 
gusts  of  wind  had  become  so  strong  that  had  we  been 
wise  we  would  not  have  started  at  all. 

Everything  was  plane  sailing  for  a  few  miles.  When 
we  were  about  halfway  to  Kay  Point,  Mrs.  Roxy  sug- 
gested that  we  had  better  turn  into  shelter  by  Stokes 
Point,  but  Roxy  answered  that  this  would  not  be  neces- 
sary for  we  would  find  shelter  behind  Kay  Point.  This 
seemed  reasonable.  We  were  sailing  northeast  straight 
before  a  southwest  wind.  At  Kay  Point  we  were  going 
to  round  a  corner  of  the  coast,  turning  southeast.  A 
southwest  wind  would  then  be  blowing  off  the  land,  giving 
us  quiet  water  to  beach  the  boat. 

Before  we  got  to  Kay  Point  it  was  a  real  gale.  In  all 
his  experience  Roxy  had  never  sailed  this  sea  in  such  a 


82  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

high  wind.  He  knew  the  bay  to  be  shallow  but  did  not 
know  how  shallow  it  was.  He  had  never  seen  breakers 
on  it,  but  now  when  we  came  to  the  vicinity  of  Kay 
Point  we  found  ahead  of  us  a  long  line  of  breakers 
stretching  far  to  the  northwest  from  the  tip  of  the  Point. 
We  saw  this  so  late  that  there  was  nothing  for  it  but 
to  run  through  the  breakers.  We  thought  the  boat  would 
not  touch  bottom  for  Roxy  assured  me  the  depth  of 
water  would  not  be  less  than  ten  feet.  But  there  was 
danger  of  the  boat  filling  and  sinking. 

Roxy  now  lived  up  to  all  the  things  I  had  heard  about 
him  as  a  wonderful  sailor.  He  had  to  sit  low  at  the  tiller 
to  do  the  steering  but  his  wife  stood  on  a  pile  of  bedding 
at  the  mast  and  chose  the  road,  for  she  had  more  sea- 
craft  than  I.  The  line  of  breakers  was  perhaps  not  more 
than  fifty  yards  wide  and  we  were  through  them  in  a 
moment.     But  it  was  an  exciting  moment. 

Now  the  time  had  almost  come  to  make  a  ninety 
degree  turn  to  the  right,  and  Roxy  warned  all  of  us  to 
stand  by  as  the  sail  came  over.  But  the  sail  did  not 
come  over;  for  just  as  we  rounded  the  cape  the  wind 
changed.  Evidently  it  was  blowing  parallel  to  the  hills, 
and  when  we  turned  the  corner  of  the  land  we  had  also 
turned  a  corner  of  the  wind.  That  meant  that  we  had 
before  us  a  straight  and  steep  coastline  thirty-five  miles 
to  Shingle  Point  and  never  a  place  to  land,  for  we  had 
based  our  supposition  of  shelter  behind  Kay  Point  on 
the  theory  that  the  wind  would  be  blowing  from  the 
southwest  when  we  got  there,  and  now  it  was  blowing 
from  the  northwest. 

There  was  only  one  other  hope.  The  wrecked  schooner, 
Bonanza,  was  lying  up  on  the  beach  at  King  Point  and 
behind  her  there  ought  to  be  shelter  as  behind  a  pier. 


HOW  AN  ESKIMO  SAILED  THROUGH  STORM      83 

This  thought  encouraged  us  a  good  deal,  for  it  meant 
that  the  run  for  our  lives  would  be  eighteen  miles  only 
instead  of  thirty-five. 

Just  after  starting  out  in  the  morning  we  had  changed 
the  large  regular  sail  of  the  whaleboat  for  the  smaller 
storm  sail.  Later  we  had  close  reefed  this,  and  we  were 
now  running  straight  before  the  wind  with  the  smallest 
sail  possible.  Every  now  and  then  we  took  water  on 
both  sides  of  our  bow,  and  every  now  and  then  we  took 
water  on  both  sides  of  our  stern.  We  had  cleared  a  place 
in  the  middle  of  the  boat  to  do  some  bailing  and  had  to 
bail  steadily. 

There  were  two  kinds  of  trouble  with  our  cargo.  One 
was  that  certain  goods  which  would  soak  up  water  were 
in  the  bottom  of  the  boat.  It  was  not  possible,  there- 
fore, to  bail  out  all  the  water  that'  came  in,  for  some 
soaked  into  the  baggage.  Another  trouble  was  that  we 
had  certain  bulky  things  on  top  of  the  load.  Roxy  and 
I  agreed  we  ought  to  throw  overboard  about  half  the 
cargo,  but  we  were  every  moment  in  such  imminent 
danger  of  being  swamped  that  we  never  dared  try  to  shift 
the  bulky  and  heavy  things  so  as  to  get  them  overboard. 

It  was  a  tense  time  as  we  approached  King  Point.  We 
saw  the  masts  of  the  Bonanza  clearly  all  the  time  but 
for  some  reason  her  hull  appeared  and  disappeared.  At 
first  we  thought  she  had  been  moved  away  from  the 
beach  and  was  floating,  lifted  up  and  down  by  the  waves. 
But  when  we  got  nearer  we  saw  that  the  situation  was 
entirely  otherwise.  She  was  still  fast  on  the  beach,  but 
the  water  was  so  steadily  breaking  over  her  that  she  was 
for  that  reason  hidden  two-thirds  of  the  time.  Half  a 
mile  before  we  got  abreast  we  had  decided  that  there 
would  be  no  shelter  behind  her,  and  when  we  ran  by  we 


84  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

saw  tie  water  pouring  over  her  lee  side  like  a  great  river 
over  a  precipice.  What  had  been  a  peaceful  little  eddy- 
behind  a  sort  of  pier  when  we  sailed  west,  was  now  about 
as  much  of  a  shelter  as  a  whirlpool  under  a  waterfall. 

In  the  beginning  of  the  gale  it  had  been  Oblutok's  job 
to  do  the  bailing,  but  shortly  after  we  passed  Kay  Point 
he  had  become  so  paralyzed  with  fright  as  to  be  entirely 
useless.  Mrs.  Roxy  was  a  better  sailor  than  I  and  under- 
stood more  clearly  how  to  do  what  she  was  told,  so  it 
was  she  who  stood  by  for  any  emergency  help,  while 
I  took  the  job  of  bailing,  which  required  no  orders  but 
only  incessant  work. 

From  King  Point  to  Shingle  Point  we  felt  each  mile 
as  if  we  should  never  stay  afloat  another  mile.  Roxy 
remarked  that  speculating  upon  so  doleful  a  possibility 
was  unwise,  that  when  the  choice  was  between  cheerful- 
ness and  gloom,  good  cheer  was  always  to  be  preferred, 
and  that  the  best  way  to  keep  your  spirits  up  was  to 
sing.  I  was  too  busy  for  singing  and  am  not  sure  that 
I  felt  like  it.  Roxy  tried  first  to  sing  various  ragtime 
songs  and  hymns  he  had  learned  from  whalers  and  mis- 
sionaries, but  when  he  found  I  did  not  join  in  he  said 
that  he  might  as  well  then  sing  Eskimo  songs  which  had 
more  spirit  to  them.  This  also  had  the  advantage  of 
enabling  his  wife  to  join  in. 

I  have  not  described  Shingle  Point  and  I  had  never 
until  now  made  for  myself  a  complete  mental  picture  of 
it.     But  with  our  li  tiding  on  its  shape  and  posi- 

tion, I  was  able  to  build  up  from  various  memories  a 
diagram  of  it  and  of  the  safe  harbor  behind.  Thousands 
of  years  ago  there  must  have  been  here  a  high  cape  and 
no  sandspit.  Then  in  the  lee  of  the  cape  the  currents 
began  to  build  up  a  finger  of  sand,  pointing  straight  east 


HOW  AN  ESKIMO  SAILED  THROUGH  STORM      85 

from  the  cape  while  the  land  runs  southeast.  This  finger 
of  sand  had  gradually  lengthened  and  lengthened  until 
now  it  was  nearly  two  miles  long  with  a  good-sized  tri- 
angular bay  behind  it.  A  quarter  of  a  mile  beyond  the 
finger  tip  of  this  sandspit  was  a  little  island  and  between 
it  and  the  spit  was  a  channel  about  nine  feet  deep  for 
a  hundred  yards  of  its  width. 

The  village,  consisting  of  Sten's  house,  some  old 
Eskimo  houses,  and  some  tents,  stood  at  the  landward 
end  of  the  sandspit  net  far  from  the  mainland  cliff. 
The  sandspit  itself  is  here  probably  some  eight  or 
twelve  feet  above  sea  level,  and  Sten's  house  was  twelve 
feet  high  on  top  of  that.  We  were  still  several  miles 
away  when  we  began  to  see  the  top  of  Sten's  house  as 
we  were  again  and  again  lifted  to  the  crests  of  the  waves. 
When  we  went  down  into  the  troughs  between  them,  the 
house  went  out  of  sight.  Not  only  that,  but  even  the 
land  along  which  we  were  running  was  occasionally 
hidden.  We  were  about  a  quarter  of  a  mile  from  the 
beach  and  the  land  was  two  or  three  hundred  feet  high. 
Even  so,  the  waves  between  us  and  the  land  were  fre- 
quently high  enough  to  hide  the  cliff  completely. 

When  we  came  near  the  village  we  could  see  all  the 
people  outside,  and  among  them  Sten  standing  at  the 
beach  and  waving  to  us.  We  could  not  hear  what  he 
was  shouting  but  his  signals  meant  clearly  that  we  were 
to  run  the  boat  ashore  right  where  he  stood  and  he  and 
the  Eskimos  would  stand  by  and  try  to  rescue  us  from 
the  undertow  of  the  surf.  Roxy  and  I  discussed  this 
and  decided  that  if  we  landed  we  would  be  sure  to  wreck 
the  boat,  that  most  or  all  of  the  cargo  would  be  lost, 
and  that  the  chances  were  that  we  should  all  be  drowned. 
He  pointed  out  we  had  already  run  more  than  thirty 


86  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

miles  safely  and  suggested  that  we  risk  another  two 
miles*  and  try  for  the  end  of  the  spit.  The  difficulty  was 
that  in  rounding  the  spit  into  the  shelter  of  the  harbor 
we  would  come  broadside  to  the  sea  and  would  probably 
sink.  However,  we  would  have  land  on  both  sides  and 
a  good  chance  of  swimming  or  floating  ashore,  while  there 
was  at  least  a  possibility  that  we  might  make  it  and  save 
our  cargo. 

Sten  told  us  later  that  as  he  ran  along  the  beach 
parallel  to  us,  our  boat  was  frequently  out  of  sight,  mast 
and  all,  in  the  trough  between  the  towering  waves,  and 
that  each  time  we  disappeared  he  fully  expected  we 
would  never  rise  again.  Long  before  we  got  to  the  end 
of  the  sandspit  we  had  left  him  and  the  Eskimos  far 
behind  although  they  did  their  best  to  keep  up.  We 
were  going  pretty  fast,  and  then  the  running  is  never 
the  best  in  the  loose  gravel  on  a  beach. 

When  we  came  to  the  end  of  the  spit  and  had  to  turn 
we  eased  the  sail  over  gently  and  all  leaned  to  the  wind- 
ward side  of  the  boat  to  try  to  keep  her  on  an  even  keel. 
It  was  rare  luck  that  no  big  wave  struck  us  just  then 
and  we  barely  rounded  the  point.  We  had  everything 
ready,  dropped  the  sail  as  we  came  to  and  got  in  two  or 
three  good  pulls  at  the  oars  before  our  boat  actually 
began  to  sink.  By  then  we  were  in  such  shallow  water 
that  we  saved  complete  sinking  by  jumping  out,  thus  re- 
lieving the  boat  of  our  weight  and  giving  her  a  little 
more  freeboard.  Three  of  the  Eskimos  got  to  the  tip 
of  the  spit  just  at  that  moment  and  rushed  into  the  water 
to  meet  us.  Between  us  we  almost  carried  the  boat  to 
the  beach. 

Sten,  who  was  a  little  fat,  came  puffing  up  just  then 
and  scolded  us  for  not  beaching  the  boat  by  the  village 


Roxy  and  His  Wife 


HOW  AN  ESKIMO  SAILED  THROUGH  STORM      87 

and  making  sure  of  our  lives  even  at  the  cost  of  losing 
the  boat  and  her  cargo.  He  admitted  later,  however, 
that  we  would  not  have  been  sure  of  our  lives  even  had 
we  made  this  attempt.  Roxy  always  maintained  that  in 
addition  to  the  other  advantages  of  actually  rounding 
the  point  in  safety,  we  had  by  saving  the  boat  escaped 
a  whole  winter  of  being  told  by  Sten  how  valuable  his 
boat  had  been  and  what  a  sacrifice  it  had  been  to  him 
to  encourage  us  to  beach  and  smash  it.  Roxy's  saying 
this  was  mainly  Eskimo  humor,  for  Sten  really  was  a 
very  generous  man. 

For  a  landsman  this  was  something  of  an  adventure 
and,  indeed,  all  the  adventure  I  cared  for  in  that  line. 
It  gave  me  one  more  reason  to  be  glad  when  the  freeze- 
up  came  a  few  days  later  to  give  us  a  safe  bridge  over 
what  had  previously  been  treacherous  water. 

The  Penelope  might  have  been  able  to  get  into  the 
harbor  behind  Shingle  Point,  although  that  is  debatable 
as  she  drew  about  as  much  as  the  estimated  depth  of 
the  channel.  However  that  may  be,  Sten  had  not  tried  to 
take  her  into  the  harbor.  Through  the  great  gale  that 
nearly  drowned  us  she  had  ridden  at  anchor  safely,  al- 
though the  people  ashore  had  been  in  continual  fear  of 
her  breaking  loose.  Now  the  freeze-up  came  unexpect- 
edly (October  2nd),  and  she  was  fast  in  the  ice  nearly 
half  a  mile  from  shore.  This  looked  bad.  But  Sten  and 
Roxy  told  of  several  instances  where  ships  had  lain  for 
a  whole  winter  in  such  exposed  situations  safely.  I  had 
a  friendly  interest  by  now  in  her  Eskimo  owners,  and 
a  personal  interest  in  the  ship  for  she  might  carry  me 
on  some  adventure  next  summer  if  our  own  Duchess 
failed  to  come.  So  I  hoped  the  optimists  were  right  and 
that  the  Penelope  was  safe  in  her  berth  in  the  ice. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

AN  AUTUMN  JOURNEY  THROUGH  ARCTIC   MOUNTAINS 

Shortly  after  the  freeze-up  Roxy  repaired  one  of  the 
old  Eskimo  houses  for  us  to  live  in.  It  had  been  built 
of  sod  and  earth  over  a  frame  of  driftwood  and  the  floor 
of  it  was  about  a  foot  lower  than  the  ground  outside. 
In  April  of  the  previous  spring  another  Eskimo  family 
had  been  living  in  this  house.  When  the  sun  became 
warm  the  snow  on  the  roof  began  to  melt,  causing  drip- 
ping within  doors.  The  family  then  moved  out  and  when 
I  first  saw  the  house  I  looked  in  through  a  skylight  upon 
a  stagnant  lake  covering  much  of  the  floor.  New  this 
had  frozen  into  solid  ice  and  we  went  in  with  axes,  adzes 
and  picks  and  hacked  up  the  ice  and  a  good  deal  of  mud 
from  the  earth  floor  under  the  ice  and  shoveled  the  whole 
thing  out.  We  then  split  a  large  number  of  driftwood 
logs,  each  along  the  middle,  hewed  the  surfaces  flat  and 
thus  made  a  floor  over  about  three-quarters  of  the 
house,  the  flat  sides  of  the  split  logs  being  up  and  the 
round  sides  resting  on  the  ground.  Had  the  house  been 
intended  for  more  permanent  occupation,  we  should  have 
made  red  planks  by  adzing  both  sides  of  the  logs  flat. 
That  part  of  the  earth  floor  not  covered  by  logs  was 
covered  deep  with  a  la  t  chips  so  that  the  ice  under- 
neath should  not  thaw,  no  matter  how  hot  the  interior 
of  the  house  might  become.  Here  was  one  of  the  many 
N    tances  of   the  usefulness  of   frost.     What  had  been 

sloppy  and  malodorous  mud   in   the  summer  was  now 

88 


AN  AUTUMN  JOURNEY  89 

odorless  and  almost  as  hard  as  concrete,  making  a  sani- 
tary and  pleasant  foundation  for  our  floor,  whether  for 
the  planking  or  for  the  shavings  and  chips. 

Roxy  told  me  that  twenty  years  ago  such  a  house 
would  have  been  heated  with  a  number  of  lamps  burn- 
ing seal  or  whale  oil.  But  we  had  instead  a  galvanized 
iron  stove  and  lived  much  as  prospectors  and  other 
pioneers  do  in  the  forests  of  the  northwest — only  our 
house  stood  c.  a  sandspit  running  out  into  the  sea  and 
the  land  back  of  us  was  a  rolling  prairie  stretching  in 
higher  and  higher  hills  back  towards  the  mountains  one 
or  two  days'  journey  away. 

Not  long  after  the  freeze-up  a  party  of  Eskimos  came 
from  the  interior  to  fetch  the  sledges  and  other  belong- 
ings which  they  had  left  behind  with  us  in  September 
when  they  had  journeyed  inland,  carrying  their  belong- 
ings on  their  own  backs  and  on  the  backs  of  their  dogs. 
Nothing  heavy  or  bulky  can  readily  be  transported  in 
that  way.  They  had,  therefore,  left  with  us  not  only 
their  sledges,  but  also  their  sheet-iron  stoves  and  many 
other  things  they  needed,  among  them  spare  ammuni- 
tion and  the  traps  which  they  were  going  to  use  during 
the  winter. 

The  season  for  trapping  had  now  almost  arrived.  On 
or  near  the  arctic  coast  it  is  considered  to  begin  about 
the  middle  of  November  and  to  last  until  early  April. 
Our  visitors  reported  that  they  had  their  winter  homes 
just  beyond  the  mountain  range,  and,  as  I  understood, 
thirty  or  forty  miles  inland.  They  had  killed  a  number 
of  caribou  and  expected  to  kill  some  more.  Half  the 
hunters  of  that  particular  village  were  now  at  home  hunt- 
ing while  the  rest  had  come  down  to  fetch  the  sleds. 

Roxy  and  Sten  became  greatly  interested  in  the  stories 


go  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

of  caribou  hunting  inland,  and  I  think  that  I  was  more 
interested  than  either  of  them.  Roxy  was  used  to  living 
on  fish  alone  and  did  not  mind  it.  And  Sten  had  in  his 
house  a  little  flour  and  other  provisions.  When  I  pur- 
chased the  groceries  from  Captain  Leavitt  in  the  fall,  I 
had  thought  I  was  getting  about  half  enough  to  live  on 
all  winter.  This  could  easily  have  been  eked  out  with 
fish  to  last  the  whole  winter.  To  do  that  seemed  rea- 
sonable at  first,  but  when  we  actually  got  the  goods 
ashore  at  Shingle  Point  both  Roxy  and  Sten  explained 
to  me  that  nothing  could  be  saved  or  rationed  which  was 
kept  in  the  house  of  an  Eskimo.  They  were  communists 
and,  furthermore,  great  believers  in  the  doctrine  that 
sufficient  unto  the  day  is  the  evil  thereof  and  that  the 
morrow  is  well  able  to  take  care  of  itself.  The  only  way 
I  could  save  the  groceries  would  be  to  keep  them  in  Sten's 
house.  The  Eskimos  understood  the  peculiar  prejudice 
the  white  men  have  for  private  property  and  would  not 
mind  it  at  all  if  white  men  had  in  their  own  homes  any 
delectable  things  unobtainable  by  Eskimos.  But  any- 
thing left  in  the  home  of  an  Eskimo  would  be  eaten  up 
just  as  quickly  as  suited  all  the  Eskimos.  Roxy  ex- 
plained that  I  would  never  be  able  to  make  friends  with 
the  people  if  I  lived  among  them  and  still  tried  to  have 
my  own  food  in  private.  I  would  either  have  to  go  and 
live  with  Sten  on  groceries  or  else  live  with  them  on  fish. 
I  had,  accordingly,  given  Sten  all  my  groceries.  Oc- 
casionally, however,  I  got  back  from  him  five  or  ten 
pounds  of  flour  and  wc  had  in  Roxy's  house  a  little  feast 
of  doughnuts  shared  by  all.  These  doughnut  banquets 
had  been  less  than  a  tenth  of  my  diet  and  I  was  hungry 
for  a  change  from  the  fish  that  had  been  nine-tenths  of 
the  diet.     I  was  no  less  eager  to  see  the  country  inland 


AN  AUTUMN  JOURNEY  91 

and  to  learn  how  the  caribou-hunting  Eskimos  lived. 
This  suited  all  parties.  Roxy  would  go  inland  with  his 
own  dog  team  to  fetch  caribou  meat  and  I  would  accom- 
pany him  with  Stcn's  dogs. 

We  started  October  18th,  Roxy  and  I  each  with  a 
team  and  the  other  hunters  with  four  teams.  A  boy 
of  about  eighteen,  named  Sitsak,  accompanied  Roxy.  As 
a  favor  which  we  expected  them  to  repay  later  in  deer 
meat,  we  helped  them  carry  their  gear.  This  sharing 
of  the  loads  made  all  our  sledges  light. 

We  traveled  slowly,  however,  and  for  many  reasons. 
One  was  that  we  were  in  no  hurry  and  there  was  much 
to  talk  about.  We  enjoyed  the  camp  life,  sat  up  joking 
and  telling  stories  till  after  midnight,  and  slept  till  the 
middle  of  the  day.  The  days,  too,  were  exceedingly 
short.  When  they  were  cloudy  there  were  not  more  than 
four  or  five  hours  of  traveling  light.  For  another  thing, 
the  snow  was  not  deep  and,  as  we  came  into  the  moun- 
tains, the  ground  became  rockier,  necessitating  many 
detours.  Even  the  light  sledges  dragged  heavily  when 
the  runners  cut  through  the  snow  to  the  ground  or  rock 
beneath.  Then  we  seemed  to  be  traveling  a  sort  of 
diagonal  course  across  valleys.  We  did  not  follow  any 
one  valley  for  long  but  would  leave  it  and  climb  over  a 
steep  ridge,  descending  sometimes  with  considerable  dif- 
ficulty into  the  next  valley.  Altogether,  it  took  us  five 
days  to  climb  to  the  crest  of  the  mountains,  although  I 
do  not  think  the  distance  can  have  been  over  thirty 
miles.    Beyond  that  it  was  down  hill  and  easier. 

On  the  way  up  the  mountains  we  traveled  at  first 
through  a  river  valley  that  had  clumps  of  willows  here 
and  there  five  or  eight  feet  high.  As  we  climbed  higher 
we  saw  continually  fewer  willows  standing,  but  my  com- 


92  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

panions  knew  exactly  where  to  look  on  the  gravel  bars 
in  the  river  bed  to  pick  up  little  willow  roots  and  stems 
that  had  been  left  there  as  driftwood  by  the  high  water 
of  last  spring.    This  gave  us  enough  to  burn. 

One  day  it  was  anticipated  that  the  evening's  camp 
site  would  be  nearly  destitute  of  fuel,  and  that  day  we 
kept  watch  as  we  traveled  across  the  gravel  bars,  pick- 
ing up  here  and  there  a  little  piece  of  stick  and  thrust- 
ing it  under  the  rope  lashings  that  held  the  loads  in  place 
on  our  sleds.  The  crest  of  the  mountains  was,  of  course, 
bare  of  any  willows  big  enough  to  show  above  the  snow. 
But  going  down  we  soon  came  to  bushes,  for  we  were 
now  on  the  southward  slope  where  the  heat  of  the  sun 
in  summer  is  more  effective.  It  was  about  five  or  eight 
miles  till  we  got  into  willows  that  were  higher  than  a 
man's  head  and  presently  we  came  to  the  homes  of  our 
caribou-hunting  friends. 

Nowadays  the  Mackenzie  Eskimos  purchase  from  the 
whalers  and  traders  tents  of  the  ordinary  white  men's 
style.  In  the  old  days  there  used  to  be  two  kinds  of 
Eskimo  tents.  The  Mackenzie  River  people  preferred 
conical  shapes,  much  like  the  Indian  wigwams  you  see 
in  pictures;  the  Alaska  Eskimos  generally  had  hemi- 
spherical tents.  The  framework  of  these  reminds  one 
very  much  of  a  round  basket  lying  bottom  side  up — 
except,  of  course,  that  the  bent  willows  which  form  the 
frame  of  the  tent  are  not  a  fraction  of  an  inch  apart,  as 
y  would  be  in  a  basket,  but  two  or  three  feet  apart. 
Over  this  frame  they  nowadays  throw  a  canvas  covering. 
In  the  old  days  this  covering  was  made  of  skins,  com- 
monly caribou.  Even  now  caribou  skins  are  sometimes 
used  for  winter  tents,  for  they  are  much  warmer  than 
canvas. 


AN  AUTUMN  JOURNEY  93 

The  village  at  which  we  had  arrived  was  made  of  houses 
built  on  the  general  plan  of  the  dome  tent.  First  they 
had  made  a  hemispherical  framework  of  pliant  willows 
with  a  floor  space  perhaps  ten  feet  across,  and  a  dome- 
shaped  roof,  so  high  that  a  tall  man  could  stand  erect 
in  the  center.  Sometimes  the  height  of  the  house  was  de- 
termined by  the  height  of  the  man  that  built  it.  One  of 
our  hosts,  Ningaksik,  was  about  six  feet  tall  and  his  house 
was  the  loftiest. 

When  the  preliminary  framework  had  been  made  of 
strong  willows,  they  had  woven  in  among  them  smaller 
willows  until  the  frame  really  resembled  a  basket.  Into 
the  spaces  between  the  willows  they  had  then  stuffed 
wads  of  moss  and  over  them  had  been  laid  a  layer  of 
moss.  On  top  of  the  whole  had  been  sifted  soft  snow. 
This  made  a  house  so  warm  that,  although  there  was 
fairly  good  ventilation  through  a  pipe  in  the  roof,  it  was 
still  not  necessary  to  do  any  more  than  barely  keep 
a  fire  in  the  stove  to  maintain  the  house  at  as  high 
a  temperature  as  we  consider  comfortable  in  American 
houses.  When  cooking  was  going  on,  the  houses  became 
uncomfortable  to  me  from  the  heat,  although  the  Eskimos 
did  not  mind  it.  In  general  the  Mackenzie  Paver  and 
Alaska  Eskimos  keep  their  winter  houses  anything  from 
ten  to  twenty  degrees  warmer  than  the  typical  steam- 
heated  houses  of  our  cities. 

There  were  only  three  real  houses  in  this  village,  for 
two  of  the  families  were  still  living  in  tents.  Up  to  our 
arrival  they  had  been  using  fireplaces  but  now  all  but  one 
of  them  installed  stoves  which  v/e  had  brought  from  the 
coast.  I  found  especial  interest  in  watching  the  cooking 
in  the  house  where  they  still  used  a  fireplace.  There  was 
nothing  in  the  way  of  a  chimney  nor  was  the  fireplace  at 


94  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

the  side,  as  our  pioneers  used  to  have  them.  Instead,  the 
fire  is  built  in  the  middle  of  the  floor.  The  fireplace  is 
made  of  huge  stones,  not  to  hold  in  the  fire  nor  yet  to 
rest  the  pots  on,  but  merely  for  the  purpose  of  absorbing 
heat  from  the  fire  so  that  the  stones  shall  give  it  out 
slowly  after  the  fire  has  died.  When  the  cooking  is  about 
to  begin,  the  fireplace  is  filled  with  specially  inflammable 
material — dry  bark,  twigs  with  resin  on  them,  and  the 
like.  Directly  above  the  fireplace  is  a  square  opening  in 
the  roof  covered  by  deer  skin  parchment  or  some  other 
translucent  material.  This  skylight  is  the  main  window 
of  the  house. 

Just  before  the  fire  is  lighted  the  window  covering  is 
removed  and  when  the  match  is  applied  the  flames  rise 
almost  to  the  roof  of  the  house.  This  conflagration  is  for 
the  purpose  of  creating  a  draft  suddenly  and  thus  prevent- 
ing any  smoke  from  spreading  through  the  house.  While 
the  fire  is  going  a  crevice  is  kept  open  at  the  bottom  of  the 
door  on  a  level  with  the  ground.  In  some  houses  there 
is  a  second  opening  along  the  ground  just  opposite  to  the 
door,  and  I  have  heard  of  houses  that  had  still  two  more 
openings,  these  at  right  angles  to  the  first  two.  Through 
these  apertures  the  fresh  air  enters  to  supply  the  strong 
current  that  rises  through  the  skylight,  thus  keeping  the 
house  free  of  smoke. 

When  the  cooking  is  finished  the  fire  is  allowed  to  die 
flown  until  there  are  only  a  few  coals  left.  By  that  time 
the  great  boulders  around  the  fireplace  have  become  hot. 
The  last  coals  are  gathered  in  a  pan,  carried  outdoors  and 
thrown  away,  so  that  there  shall  be  no  smoke  in  the  house 
when  the  parchment  is  again  put  over  the  skylight. 

I  have  found  by  actual  experience  that  even  on  a  very 
cold  day  the  stones  of  the  fireplace  will  usually  retain 


AN  AUTUMN  JOURNEY  95 

enough  heat  so  that  a  fire  every  six  hours  is  ample  to  keep 
the  house  comfortable.  The  cooking  of  the  three  regular 
meals  a  day,  therefore,  gives  enough  incidental  heat  to 
last  until  nearly  midnight  when  people  go  to  sleep.  Like 
us,  the  Eskimos  prefer  to  have  their  houses  cooler  at  night 
than  in  the  daytime,  and  houses  of  the  inland  type  may 
get  almost  cold.  I  do  not,  however,  recall  ever  having 
been  in  one  where  it  froze  even  towards  morning. 

On  our  way  over  the  mountains  Roxy  and  I  had  talked 
about  spending  a  week  or  two  at  the  caribou  camp  hunt- 
ing, but  the  weather  continued  unpropitious.  It  was 
foggy  or  snowing  nearly  every  day  and  there  was  con- 
sequently little  chance  of  finding  game.  The  hunters 
who  had  been  at  the  camp  all  the  time  said  also  that  for 
the  last  two  or  three  weeks  caribou  had  been  very  scarce. 
Just  ahead  was  the  period  of  mid-winter  darkness  when 
hunting  is  difficult,  and  the  meat  already  in  camp  was, 
therefore,  precious.  Between  us,  Roxy  and  I  had  fifteen 
dogs.  On  the  coast,  where  fish  by  the  ton  were  piled 
up  under  heaps  of  driftwood,  feeding  the  dogs  did  not 
make  noticeable  inroads  into  the  winter  provisions.  But 
here  in  the  mountain  camp  we  could  daily  see  the  little 
store  of  caribou  meat  growing  smaller. 

It  is  always  one  of  the  most  difficult  problems  of  the 
caribou-hunting  Eskimos  to  decide  how  many  dogs  to 
keep.  You  must  have  enough  to  follow  the  herds  around 
and  to  fetch  home  the  meat  of  the  animals  that  have  been 
killed.  On  the  other  hand,  if  you  have  too  many  they  will 
eat  you  out  of  house  and  home.  In  the  present  case  there 
was  no  lack  of  hospitality  on  the  part  of  our  hosts  and 
they  urged  us  to  stay  till  the  weather  became  better  so 
we  could  do  some  hunting,  but  Roxy  finally  decided  that 
doing  so  would  be  unfair  to  our  hosts  and  even  unsafe,  for 


96  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

our  dogs  were  eating  the  meat  that  might  be  needed  to 
keep  our  hosts  from  shortage  during  the  absence  of  the 
sun  when  hunting  is  difficult.  Accordingly,  we  loaded  up 
our  sledges  with  the  meat  we  had  come  to  fetch  and 
started  for  the  coast. 

The  journey  back  was  on  the  whole  no  more  difficult 
than  coming  south  had  been.  Our  sledges  were  now 
loaded  where  they  had  been  light,  but  there  was  more 
snow  on  the  ground  and  the  going  was  better.  Also  it 
was  down  hill  most  of  the  time.  Coming  up  we  had  cut 
across  the  river  courses  a  good  deal,  scrambling  up  and 
down  steep  places.  Going  back  we  took  a  longer  way, 
following  the  windings  of  a  river  that  comes  out  about 
five  miles  east  of  Shingle  Point. 

On  the  way  down  the  river  Roxy  walked  ahead  of  the 
leading  sled  with  an  ice  spear  which  had  been  made  by 
fastening  a  big  file  at  the  end  of  a  staff  seven  or  eight 
feet  long  and  then  sharpening  the  point  of  the  file.  He 
jabbed  this  through  the  snow  into  the  ice  ahead  of  him, 
raising  the  spear  methodically  and  bringing  it  down  again 
every  three  or  four  steps.  Evidently  he  was  testing  the 
ice  to  see  if  it  was  strong  enough  to  bear  us.  At  first 
this  appeared  ridiculous,  for  we  had  now  had  continuous 
frosts  for  more  than  a  month  and  the  temperature  was 
twenty  or  thirty  degrees  below  zero.  But,  like  everything 
else,  the  explanation  of  the  danger  was  simple  when  you 
once  understood  it. 

Roxy  explained  the  situation  to  me  in  detail. '  Early  in 
the  fall  while  the  river  Is  :  till  open  the  falling  snow  melts 
in  the  running  water  and  disappears.  Later  you  may 
have  a  sharp  frost  for  two  or  three  days  when  there  is 
no  snow  falling,  and  ire  two  or  three  inches  thick  or 
even  a  foot  thick  may  form  on  the  river.    Then  comes  a 


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AN  AUTUMN  JOURNEY  97 

heavy  fall  of  snow,  blanketing  the  ice  with  a  foot  or  more 
of  light  flakes.  This  snow  blanket  keeps  the  winter  cold 
away  from  the  river  ice  better  than  an  eiderdown  quilt 
or  a  fur  robe.  It  now  makes  little  difference  how  cold 
the  air  is  above  the  snow,  if  the  water  running  under  the 
ice  is  a  little  bit  above  the  freezing  point.  If  that  is  the 
case,  the  current  will  gradually  eat  away  the  ice  that  was 
formed  until  there  remains  only  a  scum  of  ice  to  support 
the  snow  above  it.  In  some  cases  even  this  scum  of  ice 
is  eaten  away  by  the  current  and  then  the  snow  drops 
down  into  the  open  water,  feaving  a  gaping  hole  which 
can  be  seen  from  a  distance  and  which  can,  therefore,  be 
avoided.  However,  when  an  actual  hole  appears  the  frost 
gets  another  chance,  so  that  it  will  not  be  many  hours 
until  clear  ice  perfectly  safe  to  walk  upon  forms  over 
that  particular  patch.  The  danger  places,  therefore,  are 
not  where  any  danger  sign  is  visible,  but  where  the  snow 
in  front  of  you  lies  white  and  apparently  safe. 

In  later  years  of  travel  in  the  North  I  have  heard  story 
after  story  of  the  most  experienced  Indians  being  drowned 
in  the  northern  rivers  and  in  those  northern  lakes  where 
there  are  currents.  In  big  lakes,  such  as  Great  Bear  or 
Great  Slave,  strong  currents  are  occasionally  developed, 
possibly  through  tidal  influence.  Far  from  shore  these 
are  not  dangerous,  but  in  the  vicinity  of  a  point  of  land 
the  traveler  on  the  northern  lakes  should  be  exceedingly 
careful.  Though  the  ice  of  Great  Bear  Lake,  for  instance, 
may  be  ten  feet  thick  in  places,  there  are  other  places 
where  men  and  sleds  will  disappear  suddenly  through  the 
snow  because  the  ice  that  formed  before  the  snow  fell 
has  since  been  eaten  away.  This  is  a  type  of  danger  to 
which  the  Eskimos  are  far  less  exposed  than  the  Indians, 
for  the  Eskimos  mainly  keep  to  the  seacoast.     When 


98  HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

they  are  on  the  inland  rivers  they  appear  to  be  on  the 
average  more  careful  than  the  Indians. 

On  our  river  there  was  little  danger  of  drowning,  for 
it  was  shallow,  but  there  was  the  danger  of  getting  your 
feet  wet,  not  only  in  the  way  I  have  described  but  also 
in  another  way  that  is  more  common  and  more  difficult 
to  avoid.  A  shallow  river  will  quickly  freeze  to  the  bot- 
tom in  some  rapid.  The  water  above  the  frozen  place 
will  then  be  held  back  until  finally  it  will  burst  through 
the  ice  somewhere  above  the  obstruction  and  flood  the 
surface.  Now  there  are  places  where  snowdrifts  lie  clean 
across  the  river  in  ridges,  forming  obstructions  that  dam 
the  water  back  so  that  you  may  have  ten  or  even  fifteen 
inches  of  water  on  top  of  the  previous  ice.  If  this  flooding 
has  taken  place  only  a  few  hours  before  you  come  to  that 
stretch  of  the  river,  there  are  only  two  courses  open. 
Either  you  must  scramble  up  into  the  hillside  and  travel 
parallel  to  the  river  till  you  get  below  the  flooded  place, 
or  else  you  must  camp  and  wait  till  the  surface  water 
has  frozen  over.  In  winter  this  is  seldom  a  long  wait. 
The  general  rule  is  that  if  you  come  to  a  bad  place  in  the 
forenoon  you  try  to  get  around  it,  but  if  you  come  to  one 
in  the  afternoon  you  camp  over  night  and  expect  the  ice 
to  carry  you  next  morning. 

On  the  last  day  of  our  homeward  journey  we  were  in 
a  hurry  so  as  not  to  have  to  make  camp.  We  had  made 
up  our  minds  to  sleep  that  night  at  Shingle  Toint.  For 
that  reason  we  took  more  risk  than  ordinary,  traveling 
over  thin  flood  ice.  We  all  broke  through  several  times. 
Roxy,  being  ahead,  was  the  first  to  break  through  and  I 
saw  how  he  jumped  instantly  out  of  the  water  into  a  deep 
snowbank  and  rubbed  the  snow  all  over  his  wet  feet. 
This  was  because  dry  snow  at  low  temperatures  acts  like 


AN  AUTUMN  JOURNEY  99 

the  best  kind  of  blotter,  soaking  up  all  moisture.  If  you 
have  on  several  thicknesses  of  woolen  socks,  for  instance, 
you  may  slip  to  your  ankle  into  water  and  get  your  foot 
out  of  the  water  into  the  snow  so  quickly  that  this  blotter 
sucks  the  moisture  out  before  it  gets  through  all  the  dif- 
ferent layers  in  to  your  skin.  If  you  know  in  advance 
you  are  going  to  get  into  the  water  anyway,  it  is  a  fine 
idea  to  go  to  some  place  where  you  can  stand  firmly  on 
one  foot  while  you  stick  the  other  quickly  into  water 
and  then  into  a  snowbank.  This  will  form  a  coating  of 
frost  in  your  outer  stockings  which  will  later  on  be  water- 
proof and  keep  out  further  wettings  almost  as  well  as  a 
rubber  boot. 

The  Eskimos  make  admirable  water  boots  out  of  seal 
skin.  These  are  always  used  in  summer,  but  in  winter 
they  are  too  cold  and  are  put  on  only  when  you  know  for 
certain  that  you  are  going  to  have  a  good  deal  of  wading 
during  the  day.  This  day  we  had  not  put  on  our  water- 
proofs and,  as  I  was  inexpert  in  waterproofing  my  foot- 
gear by  dampening  and  freezing  it,  I  got  wet  through  my 
deer  skin  boots  and  socks.  That  evening  when  we  got 
home  and  when  I  removed  my  footgear,  I  found  that  my 
heel  was  frozen  slightly.  Since  then  I  have  spent  ten 
winters  in  the  North  and  this  is  the  only  time  that  I  have 
had  a  foot  even  touched  by  frost.  I  have  already  given 
part  of  the  reason — my  inexperience.  Another  part  was 
that  we  were  still  wearing  autumn  clothing  and  were  not 
as  admirably  prepared  for  meeting  the  cold  as  we  would 
have  been  had  the  journey  been  made  a  month  later. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE   SUN   GOES   AWAY   FOR   THE   WINTER 

A  newcomer  in  the  Arctic  spends  much  time  watching 
the  sun  as  it  sinks  lower  and  lower  each  day  until  at 
last  it  ceases  to  appear  above  the  horizon  and  the  "Long 
Night"  begins.  With  us,  the  sun  disappeared  behind  the 
mountains  to  the  south  about  the  middle  of  November. 

Towards  Christmas  I  became  dissatisfied  with  my  stay 
at  Shingle  Point,  but  for  no  other  reason  than  that  the 
Eskimos  there  were  too  sophisticated.  Roxy,  for  instance, 
had  worked  on  whaling  ships  for  more  than  twenty  years 
and  spoke  English  fluently  although  it  was,  of  course,  the 
kind  of  broken  English  which  whalers  and  traders  always 
use  in  dealing  with  Indians  or  Eskimos.  If  the  white 
men  who  come  in  contact  with  the  Eskimos  would  only 
speak  good  English  to  them,  the  Eskimos  would  have 
some  chance  of  learning  good  English.  This  is  never  the 
case,  however,  except  in  those  parts  of  Alaska  where 
Government  schools  have  been  established  or  in  some 
part  of  (  where  a  missionary  maintains  a  school. 

The  captain  who  is  talking  to  an  Eskimo  will  never  say, 
"He  traveled  rapidly."  Instead  he  says  "Him  go  plenty 
quick,"  or  something  of  that  sort.  This,  then,  was  the 
kind  of  English  that  Roxy  spoke  and  he  used  it  in  our 
dealings  continually. 

The  rest  of  Roxy's  family  were  his  wife,  his  adopted 
son  about  fourteen  years  old,  and  adopted  daughter 
(whom  I  have  called  his  daughter)  aged  ten.  By  the 
time  winter  actually  set  In,  all  our  fellow  villagers  of  the 


THE  SUN  GOES  AWAY  FOR  THE  WINTER    101 

autumn  had  moved  away  except  the  same  bearded  Ob- 
lutok  whom  I  have  described,  his  wife,  daughter  and  son- 
in-law,  Sitsak.  None  of  these  spoke  English  to  any  extent 
but  they  used  instead  a  sort  of  "pidgin"  which  has  grown 
up  among  the  Eskimos  for  a  peculiar  reason. 

There  are  probably  few  languages  in  the  world  more 
difficult  to  learn  than  Eskimo.  If  you  want  to  get  along 
well,  you  have  to  use  every  day  a  vocabulary  of  ten  or 
twelve  thousand  words.  This  is  a  vocabulary  three  or 
four  times  as  large  as  that  used  by  the  average  European 
when  speaking  a  European  language.  In  addition,  the 
inflections  are  so  complicated  that  Greek  or  German  would 
be  easy  in  comparison.  The  white  men  who  come  in  con- 
tact with  the  Eskimos  are  ordinarily  not  of  the  scholarly 
type.  They  may  try  when  first  they  come  to  the  country 
to  learn  Eskimo  but  they  soon  give  it  up  as  being  hope- 
lessly difficult  and  drop  into  the  general  habit  of  using 
"jargon"  or  "pidgin." 

This  jargon  itself  has  been  developed  because  of  the 
difficulty  of  learning  the  real  language.  It  is  an  artificial 
tongue,  comparable  to  the  pidgin  English  that  is  used  by 
Europeans  in  dealing  with  Chinamen.  The  Mackenzie 
River  jargon  consists  of  three  or  four  hundred  words, 
according  to  which  whaler  or  which  Eskimo  you  talk 
with.  In  addition  to  the  regular  jargon  nearly  every  in- 
dividual invents  a  few  special  words  of  his  own  which 
are  known  to  him  and  those  he  deals  with.  Where  the 
real  Eskimo  is  highly  inflected,  this  jargon  is  not  inflected 
at  all. 

It  is  a  curious  thing  that  many  white  men,  even  those 
who  have  lived  for  long  periods  with  the  Eskimos,  have 
mistaken  the  jargon  for  the  real  Eskimo  language.  Ex- 
amples of  that  were  all  the  police  who  were  in  the  vicinity 


102        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

of  Herschel  Island  during  my  first  year.  These  police- 
men had  come  to  the  country  only  a  year  or  two  before 
and  had  found  the  jargon  in  daily  use  between  Eskimos 
and  white  men  (such  white  men,  for  instance,  as  Cap- 
tain Klinkenberg)  who  had  been  married  to  Eskimo 
women  so  long  that  they  had  large  families  already  partly 
grown.  I  think  Klinkenberg's  oldest  daughter  was  about 
twelve  or  fourteen  when  I  heard  him  talking  to  his  wife 
fluently  in  some  language  I  did  not  understand.  I  wrote 
in  my  diary  at  the  time  that  he  talked  with  her  in  Es- 
kimo. The  same  had  been  the  impression  of  the  police 
when  they  came  to  the  country.  Then  month  by  month 
they  had  learned  this  language  which  the  whalers  were 
talking  to  the  Eskimos  until  they  knew  nearly  or  quite 
every  word  of  it  and  could  speak  it  as  fluently  as  the 
whalers.  They  then  thought  they  could  speak  Eskimo, 
and  when  I  came  they  told  me  so. 

Constable  Walker  gave  me  a  three-hundred-word  vo- 
cabulary of  what  he  considered  pure  Eskimo.  I  found 
out  later  that  the  stems  of  about  ten  of  the  words  came 
from  the  languages  of  the  South  Sea  Islands.  These  were 
apparently  words  used  by  the  whalers  in  talking  with 
Hawaiians  and  later  incorporated  by  them  into  the  speech 
they  used  with  the  Eskimos.  There  were  a  few  words  de- 
rived from  Spanish  and  from  English,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  phrase  "me  savvy"  where  the  "me"  comes  from  Eng- 
lish and  the  "savvy"  from  Spanish  by  way  of  southern 
California  where  some  of  the  whalers  had  lived.  Other 
whalers  had  been  in  Greenland  waters  before  they  came  to 
Herschtl  Island  and  had  brought  with  them  Greenland 
jargon  words  which  came  ultimately  from  the  Danish — 
such  as  "coonie"  (so  written  by  (  onstable  Walker  when 
he  gave  me  his  vocabulary).    Although  I  can  read  Danish, 


THE  SUN  GOES  AWAY  FOR  THE  WINTER    103 

I  did  not  at  the  time  recognize  this  word  as  the  Danish 
word  kona,  meaning  woman.  In  the  Herschel  Island 
jargon  it  is  used  to  mean  either  woman  or  wife. 

It  did  not  take  me  long  to  find  out  that  the  jargon  was 
not  the  real  Eskimo,  for  I  had  brought  with  me  an  ex- 
cellent grammar  of  Greenland  Eskimo  made  by  a  German 
scholar  who  had  lived  nearly  all  his  life  in  Greenland.  I 
used  to  beg  Roxy  and  the  rest  of  the  people  to  talk  to  me 
in  real  Eskimo  and  they  would  sometimes  do  it  for  a 
while,  but  they  always  relapsed,  Roxy  into  the  broken 
English  and  the  others  into  the  jargon  which  they  spoke 
to  Sten  and  which  they  had  been  using  with  the  white 
men  since  1889.  Indeed,  there  had  been  a  similar  jargon 
in  use  between  the  Eskimos  and  the  Indians  to  the  south 
of  them  even  before  the  whites  came,  so  that  the  habit 
of  talking  pidgin  to  any  kind  of  foreigner  was  ingrained 
in  all  the  Mackenzie  Eskimos. 

I  understood  from  Roxy,  however,  that  the  people  who 
lived  to  the  east  of  the  Mackenzie  delta  were  far  less 
sophisticated.  One  peculiar  thing  Roxy  told  me  about 
his  cousin  Ovayuak  (whom  Mr.  Firth  had  recommended 
to  me  as  the  best  of  all  the  Eskimos)  was  that  he  was 
proud  of  the  Eskimo  ways  and  Eskimo  tongue  and  did 
his  best  to  keep  them  pure.  This  Roxy  considered  an 
amiable  eccentricity,  but  he  understood  that  the  eccen- 
tricity would  serve  my  purpose,  so  he  suggested  that  if 
I  wanted  to  learn  real  Eskimo  and  find  out  as  nearly  as 
possible  what  the  Eskimos  were  like  before  the  white 
men  came,  I  had  better  go  to  visit  Ovayuak.  The  idea 
struck  me  favorably  at  once.  It  had  the  further  advan- 
tage of  bringing  me  near  to  Harrison's  camp,  and  being 
a  little  lonesome  I  thought  of  the  possibility  of  spending 
Christmas  with  him. 


104        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

Roxy  now  agreed  that  he  and  Sitsak  would  take  me  to 
Tuktuyaktok,  the  place  where  Ovayuak  lived,  a  journey 
of  about  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles  by  the  devious  chan- 
nels between  the  islands,  although  no  more  than  half  of 
that  as  the  crow  flies.  The  arrangement  was  that  when 
we  got  there  I  should  purchase  from  Ovayuak  a  chest 
•of  Hudson's  Bay  Company's  tea  and  a  Hudson's  Bay 
Company's  four-point  blanket  to  pay  him  for  the  trip. 
He  insisted  that  these  things  and  none  other  should  be 
the  pay  for  the  journey  and  through  his  insistence  I 
learned  one  more  way  in  which  the  Eskimos  are  similar 
to  ourselves. 

Before  the  whalers  came  to  Herschel  Island,  the  Es- 
kimos had  been  in  the  habit  of  purchasing  from  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Company  four  or  five  main  items — tobacco, 
tea,  guns  and  ammunition,  traps  and  cloths  of  various 
kinds — silk,  velvet,  canvas,  blankets,  etc.  For  all  of 
these  they  had  to  pay  fabulous  prices  because  the  Com- 
pany's difficulty  in  getting  goods  to  Fort  Macpherson 
overland  was  great,  and  of  course  the  trade  of  the  country 
was  small.  That  there  was  in  the  early  days  no  competi- 
tion may  have  had  something  to  do  also  with  keeping  up 
the  price. 

When  the  whalers  came  to  Herschel  Island  in  1889 
they  were  so  eager  to  get  fresh  meat  and  fresh  fish  from 
the  Eskimos  (things  for  which  there  had  been  no  sale 
until  then)  that  they  heaped  upon  the  Eskimos  far  more 
than  they  knew  what  to  do  with  of  all  the  different  things 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  had  been  in  the  habit  of 
selling  them,  and  a  great  many  other  things  besides. 
Now  the  whaler  goods  differed  from  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Company's  goods.  The  eagerness  of  the  whalers  to  ex- 
change their  wares  for  things  which  had  previously  had 


THE  SUN  GOES  AWAY  FOR  THE  WINTER     105 

no  market  value  gave  the  Eskimos  the  impression  that 
the  whaler  goods  must  be  inferior  in  quality.    In  some 
cases  this  may  really  have  been  true,  as  with  the  velvets, 
blankets,  etc.     But  in  other  cases  the  opposite  was  ob- 
viously true.    Take,  for  instance,  shotguns.    The  whaling 
officers  frequently  brought  in  double-barreled  guns  of 
Greener  and  other  well-known  English  types.    These  they 
used  to  present  to  the  Eskimos  in  return  for  special  favors 
or  as  mere  acts  of  friendliness.    In  other  cases  they  sold 
them  to  the  Eskimos  for  small  quantities  of  fresh  meat. 
The  Hudson's  Bay  Company  had  been  bringing  in  only 
single-  or  double-barreled  muzzle  loaders.    In  the  world 
markets  the  muzzle  loaders  would  probably  have  cost 
less  than  ten  dollars  each  while  the  breech  loaders  of  the 
whalers  were  in  some  cases  worth  over  a  hundred  dollars. 
But  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  had  never  given  away 
any  muzzle  loaders  and  had  instead  insisted  on  a  fabulous 
price  for  them.     The  impression  then  grew  up  among 
the  Eskimos  that  the  muzzle  loaders  were  much  better 
guns  than  the  breech  loaders.     When  I  tried  to  argue 
them  out  of  this,  it  was  like  trying  to  convince  a  woman 
that  silk  and  lace  are  less  valuable  than  woolens  because 
they  give  less  warmth  and  wear  out  more  easily,     The 
Eskimos  I  met  said  to  me  quite  plainly:  "It  is  true  that 
the  breech  loaders  shoot  as  well  and  are  much  more  con- 
venient."    "But,"  they  added,  "they  are,  nevertheless, 
inferior  guns" — just  as  women  might  admit  that  a  lace 
gown  is  neither  strong  nor  warm  but  is,  nevertheless,  a 
better  dress  than  a  stronger,  warmer  one  made  out  of  a 
cheap  fabric. 

For  a  similar  reason  Roxy  wanted  Hudson's  Bay  Com- 
pany's tea.  I  knew  the  price  of  that  tea  in  Winnipeg  to 
be  eighteen  cents  a  pound  and  I  knew  that  some  of  the 


106        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

tea  we  had  at  Shingle  Point  would  have  cost  in  Winnipeg 
at  least  forty  cents  a  pound.  However,  the  forty-cent 
tea  was  whaler  tea  which  the  Eskimos  were  accustomed 
to  get  cheaply,  while  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company's  tea 
had  never  been  sold  for  less  than  two  dollars  a  pound. 
The  Mackenzie  Eskimos,  accordingly,  considered  Hud- 
son's Bay  tea  as  the  only  tea  any  man  would  drink  who 
could  afford  it. 

I  readily  promised  Roxy  the  tea  and  blanket,  for  I 
thought  I  would  be  able  to  secure  them  from  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Company's  goods  which  Ovayuak  was  selling  as  their 
agent.  Later  Roxy  made  a  second  condition,  that  I  was 
to  buy  from  Sten  two  good  dogs  and  lend  them  to  him  to 
use  along  with  his  own  team  on  the  way  east.  When  we 
got  to  Ovayuak's  I  would  keep  those  dogs  there  and  he 
and  Sitsak  would  return  to  Shingle  Point  with  the  dimin- 
ished team. 


CHAPTER  X 

LOST   IN    THE    MACKENZIE   DELTA 

We  started  on  December  first.  This  was  my  initial 
winter  journey  and  on  it  I  learned  a  good  many  things 
about  winter  travel.  The  first  was  how  to  dress.  In 
this  I  had  been  well  coached  both  by  Roxy  and  by  Sten, 
and  the  women  had  made  me  up  a  suitable  outfit  of 
clothing. 

The  ideal  clothing  for  winter  travel  is  made  entirely  of 
caribou  skin.  We  speak  of  it  as  being  tanned  because 
we  have  no  better  word,  but  really  it  is  not  tanned  at 
all — only  scraped. 

When  I  lived  among  the  Dogrib  and  Yellowknife  In- 
dians of  Great  Bear  Lake  (1910-11),  I  found  they  had 
an  elaborate  system  of  tanning.  First  they  dried  the  skin 
thoroughly,  next  they  rubbed  all  over  the  surface  a  paste 
made  out  of  decayed  caribou  liver  or  decayed  caribou 
brains.  Then  they  rolled  the  hide  up  and  allowed  it  to 
remain  for  a  day  or  two.  This  was  only  one  of  several 
processes  through  which  they  put  the  skin.  At  the  end 
it  was  soft,  had  a  yellowish  color  on  the  flesh  side,  and 
a  pungent  odor.    The  entire  process  took  a  week  or  more. 

A  Mackenzie  Eskimo  woman  gets  better  results  with 
one-fifth  of  the  labor  and  in  one-tenth  of  the  time.  She 
just  scrapes  the  skin  with  a  blunt  scraper,  then  dampens 
it,  dries  it,  and  scrapes  it  a  second  time.  This  makes  the 
skin  if  anything  softer  than  the  Indian  tan,  a  beautiful 
pure  white  on  the  flesh  side  and  without  any  odor.  Fur- 
thermore, the  Indian  process  fills  the  pores  of  the  skin 

107 


io8        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

with  some  material  which  stiffens  on  freezing,  so  that 
even  though  the  Indian  tanned  skin  may  be  just  as  soft 
as  the  Eskimo  tanned  in  a  warm  room,  it  will  be  appre- 
ciably stiffer  out  of  doors. 

The  Eskimo  "tanning"  also  makes  the  skin  exceedingly 
light  so  that  a  complete  set  of  winter  garments  weighs 
rather  less  than  the  average  man's  business  suit  in  winter 
in  such  places  as  New  York  or  London.  The  best  suit 
I  ever  had  weighed  a  little  less  than  ten  pounds,  and  that 
included  every  stitch  I  had  on  from  my  toes  to  the  top 
of  my  head. 

Our  winter  undergarments  have  the  fur  in  all  the  way 
from  socks  to  mittens.  You  may  think  this  would  tickle, 
but  it  does  not  any  more  than  a  sealskin  collar  tickles 
3'our  cheek.  We  arrange  our  clothes  so  that  we  seldom 
perspire  even  with  fairly  violent  exercise,  but  if  they  do 
get  damp,  they  dry  much  more  quickly  than  woolen  gar- 
ments. The  outer  clothes  have  the  fur  out  everywhere 
except  the  palms  of  the  outer  mittens  and  the  soles  of 
the  boots. 

Both  the  undershirt  and  the  coat  that  goes  over  it  have 
a  hood  which  covers  the  head  so  as  to  protect  the  ears 
but  leaves  the  cheeks  and  forehead  exposed.  I  have 
known  white  men  who  wore  knitted  woolen  caps  inside 
the  hood  and  I  think  if  I  were  bald  I  might  do  the  same. 
For  a  man  who  is  not  bald  (and  Eskimos  seldom  are) 
using  a  knitted  cap  is  no  advantage.  I  used  to  think  it 
would  be  better  to  have  the  hood  come  far  forward,  some- 
thing like  a  sunbonnet,  so  as  to  shelter  the  nose  and  cheeks 
from  a  cold  wind.  I  have  found  this  the  opposite  of  an 
advantage,  for  your  breath  catches  in  the  hood  if  it  sticks 
too  fat  forward  and  forms  a  mass  of  ice  that  rubs  against 
youi  cheek  and  eventually  freezes  you. 


LOST  IN  THE  MACKENZIE  DELTA         109 

Regulation  of  temperature  is  obtained  by  adjusting 
your  belt.  Both  the  shirt  and  outer  coat  are  made  so 
that  they  hang  loosely  outside  of  the  trousers  and  come 
down  halfway  to  the  knee.  If  the  day  is,  say,  around 
zero  or  200  below,  you  would  very  likely  wear  nothing 
but  your  shirt  (or,  as  we  frequently  call  it,  undercoat) 
hanging  loose  like  a  cloak.  If  that  proves  chilly,  you  put 
on  a  belt  which  keeps  the  warmth  in  a  bit  more.  If  you 
begin  to  perspire,  you  take  off  your  belt  again.  If  it  is 
still  too  warm,  you  open  up  the  neck  of  the  shirt  a  little 
under  the  chin  and  allow  a  cold  current  of  air  to  circulate 
up  around  your  body  and  come  out  at  your  neck.  When 
you  are  overheated  this  feels  very  pleasant,  and  if  it  be- 
gins to  feel  unpleasantly  cool  you  tighten  up  the  neck 
of  your  undercoat  again. 

If  the  undercoat  with  a  belt  is  not  warm  enough,  you 
put  on  over  it  the  outer  coat,  which  you  have  been  carry- 
ing on  top  of  the  sled.  The  two  coats  with  the  belt  on 
the  undercoat  may  now  be  too  warm  so  you  remove  the 
belt.  If  it  is  extremely  cold,  you  take  the  belt  off  the 
inner  and  put  it  outside  the  outer  coat  so  as  to  hold  both 
of  them  against  you. 

With  the  trousers  the  same  general  principles  apply 
except  that  I  have  found  it  even  better  than  two  pairs  of 
fur  trousers  to  have  the  inner  trousers  of  fur  and  over 
them  several  pairs  of  light  outer  trousers  made  Chinese- 
fashion  of  some  thin  cloth,  such  as  drilling.  You  would 
carry  three  or  four  pairs  of  them  on  top  of  the  sled.  If 
the  single  under  trousers  are  not  enough,  you  put  on 
one  pair  of  loose  drill  trousers  over  them.  If  that  is  not 
enough,  you  put  on  a  second  pair,  and  if  that  is  not 
enough  still  a  third,  and  so  on  till  you  have  enough. 
When  it  gets  warmer  you  take  them  off  one  by  one  and 


no        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

put  them  on  top  of  the  sled  to  be  ready  for  the  next 
emergency. 

These  are  ideal  clothes  to  use  in  winter  in  such  places 
as  Russia,  the  Adirondack^,  Minnesota,  or  Montana,  and 
generally  everywhere  in  Canada  except  on  the  Pacific 
Coast.  Or,  rather,  they  would  be  ideal  if  people  knew 
how  to  take  care  of  them,  but  that  is  a  delicate  matter. 
Should  they  become  damp  you  must  not  hang  them  up 
near  a  stove,  for  in  that  case  they  would  not  last  you 
many  weeks.  The  same  heat  that  would  not  affect  our 
ordinary  "civilized"  furs  at  all  will  spoil  caribou  skin 
clothes.  If  they  become  damp  they  shrink  when  they 
dry,  but  a  little  scraping  makes  them  soft  again.  There 
are  many  other  tricks  of  taking  care  of  caribou  skin 
clothes  after  they  get  wet  or  when  something  goes 
wrong. 

But  the  main  thing  is  to  see  that  nothing  does  go  wrong. 
To  begin  with,  you  should  not  let  them  get  damp.  Be- 
fore going  North,  I  had  read  some  polar  books  and  had 
learned  how  the  arctic  explorers  suffered  from  wet  cloth- 
ing. Hoar  frost  would  gather  in  them  in  the  day  time. 
This  cannot  be  prevented,  for  even  when  you  are  not 
perspiring  there  is  a  certain  amount  of  invisible  vapor 
coming  out  all  over  your  body.  I  found  on  this  winter 
journey  across  the  Mackenzie  delta  that  on  a  calm  morn- 
ing if  I  held  my  bare  hand  in  front  of  me  there  would 
be  columns  of  steam  rising  from  every  finger  although 
the  hand  appeared  perfectly  dry.  This  steam  is  always 
rising  from  the  body  no  matter  what  the  temperature,  and 
indeed  it  rises  the  more  rapidly  the  warmer  the  tempera- 
ture. But  it  is  not  visible  to  the  human  eye  except  when 
if  is  condensed  into  a  kind  of  fog  by  a  temperature  of 
thirty  or  forty  below  zero.    It  is  this  ordinarily  invisible 


LOST  IN  THE  MACKENZIE  DELTA         m 

vapor  that  the  explorers  tell  about  condensing  in  their 
clothing  and  making  them  damp. 

When  the  explorers  I  had  read  about  came  into  camp 
in  the  evening,  there  was  a  little  rime  along  every  seam, 
and  perhaps  in  other  parts  of  their  clothes.  As  the  camp 
became  warm  this  melted  and  made  the  clothes  damp. 
They  did  not  dry  over  night.  Next  day  more  rime  gath- 
ered and  next  night  they  became  more  wet.  Some  ex- 
plorers have  described  how  their  clothes  became  soaking 
wet  in  a  week  or  two  of  travel.  They  would  sleep  at  night 
with  everything  on  inside  the  sleeping  bags.  The  frost 
in  the  garments  then  melted  and  the  explorers  slept  in  a 
cold  bath  all  night.  Next  morning  when  they  got  up  they 
would  have  to  take  hold  of  their  sleeves  with  their  fingers 
to  keep  them  tight  while  they  were  freezing,  so  that  they 
should  not  wrinkle  up  and  leave  the  wrist  bare.  The 
sleeves  were  now  as  stiff  as  boards.  One  explorer  tells 
how  his  sleeves  were  so  hard  that  the  edge  of  one  cut  a 
gash  into  his  wrist  just  above  the  thumb  so  deep  that  the 
scar  remained  for  years  after. 

With  all  this  book  knowledge  in  my  head,  I  was  a  good 
deal  worried  setting  out  on  my  first  trip  with  Roxy,  but 
he  explained  to  me  how  all  these  troubles  could  be  easily 
avoided.  On  this  particular  trip  we  would  have  a  stove 
and  a  roaring  fire  every  night,  so  wet  things  could  be 
dried.  However,  the  trick  was  to  take  off  before  going 
into  camp  the  garments  with  hoar  frost  in  them.  If  you 
are  wearing  only  one  coat  the  hoar  frost  will  not  gather 
inside  of  it  because  of  the  warmth  of  your  body,  and  it  is 
found  only  on  the  outside.  This  is  the  smooth  skin  side 
and  you  can  scrape  the  rime  off  with  a  knife  or  shake  it 
off.  But  if  you  are  wearing  two  coats,  the  hoar  frost 
will  probably  gather  on  the  inner  side  of  the  outer  coat. 


ii2        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

Before  going  into  camp  you  will,  accordingly,  take  off 
your  outer  coat,  turn  it  inside  out  and  scrape  off  the 
frost.  Or  else  you  may  just  pull  it  off  as  you  go  in  and 
leave  it  outside  the  door  so  that  the  hoar  frost  will  never 
have  a  chance  to  thaw.  Next  morning  you  slip  it  on  as 
you  go  out  and,  although  there  may  be  hoar  frost  in  it, 
it  does  not  annoy  you,  for  it  is  in  the  form  of  dry 
powder. 

The  only  kind  of  hoar  frost  that  becomes  disagreeable 
is  what  you  allow  to  melt  either  in  the  house  or  else  on 
your  body  when  the  weather  gets  warm.  Warm  weather 
is,  therefore,  something  to  watch  and  guard  against  care- 
fully. Changes  of  temperature  are  occasionally  rapid. 
You  may  have  forty  below  zero  when  you  start  out  in 
the  morning  and  hoar  frost  will  gather  on  the  inside  of 
your  outer  coat  during  the  forenoon.  In  the  afternoon  it 
may  cloud  up,  the  temperature  rising  to  twenty  above 
zero.  Just  as  soon  as  you  notice  the  increasing  warmth 
of  the  air,  you  must  take  off  your  outer  coat  and  either 
put  it  on  the  sled  where  it  will  remain  unthawed,  or  else 
turn  it  inside  out,  shake  it  and  carefully  remove  all  hoar 
frost. 

When  you  describe  this  technique  of  keeping  skin 
clothes  dry,  it  sounds  a  little  complicated,  but  in  actual 
practice  you  get  so  used  to  it  that  it  is  no  more  bother 
than  brushing  a  dark  "business"  suit  to  keep  dust  and 
fuzz  from  showing. 

I  had  heard  and  rend  about  Eskimo  snowhouses  and 
was  eager  to  sec  one.  On  this  trip,  however,  Roxy  never 
built  a  real  snowhousc,  for  he  considered  it  more  con- 
venient tc  carry  a  square  piece  of  canvas  to  use  along  with 
a  snow  wall.  We  built  each  evening  a  circular  wall  about 
six  feet  high  and  then  spread  over  it  our  piece  of  canvas. 


LOST  IN  THE  MACKENZIE  DELTA         113 

It  had  a  hole  in  it  for  a  stovepipe.  There  was  plenty  of 
driftwood  everywhere  and  we  kept  a  roaring  fire  in  a 
sheet-iron  stove  every  evening  until  bed  time.  When  we 
went  to  sleep  the  camp  became  exceedingly  cold.  While 
the  fire  was  going,  sparks  used  to  drop  on  our  canvas 
roof  and  burn  holes  in  it,  so  that  before  the  trip  was  over 
it  looked  a  good  deal  like  a  sieve.  By  shifting  my  head 
a  little  I  used  to  be  able  to  lie  in  bed  and  follow  for  an 
hour  through  one  of  the  holes  the  motion  of  some  good- 
sized  star.  When  it  was  forty  below  outside,  I  think  the 
night  temperature  inside  of  the  camp  must  have  been 
about  twenty  below.  This  is  an  easily  avoidable  hardship, 
as  I  discovered  later.  However,  I  was  expecting  hard- 
ships and  was  rather  pleased  to  find  that  at  last  I  had  to 
endure  something  disagreeable.  We  had  plenty  of  bed- 
ding and  were  not  actually  cold,  but  I  had  to  cover  up 
my  head  in  sleeping,  and  that  is  unpleasant. 

As  a  boy  I  had  read  James  Fenimore  Cooper  and  many 
other  stories  about  Indians  and  Eskimos.  One  of  the 
ideas  I  got  from  all  these  books  was  that  an  Indian  never 
gets  lost.  Traveling  down  the  Mackenzie  River  I  had 
been  told  by  some  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  traders  that  this 
was  correct  and  that  an  Indian  is  almost  infallible  in  find- 
ing his  way.  Other  traders  told  me  that  an  Indian  gets 
lost  as  easily  as  anybody,  and  those  called  me  to  notice 
that  the  other  traders  who  had  told  me  that  an  Indian 
never  loses  his  way  were  stay-at-homes.  This  I  verified. 
Perhaps  two-thirds  of  the  northern  fur  traders  are  traders 
primarily  and  remain  in  or  near  their  cabins  the  whole 
time,  no  matter  how  many  years  they  live  in  the  North. 
A  few  are  of  an  adventurous  disposition  and  travel  and 
hunt  with  Indians.  These  latter  were  usually  if  not  al- 
ways of  the  opinion  that  a  white  man  with  the  same 


ii4         HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

amount  of  experience  can  find  his  way  about  better  than 
an  Indian. 

However,  it  is  difficult  to  shake  off  the  ideas  we  have 
held  for  a  lifetime,  and  when  on  the  third  day  of  travel 
through  the  Mackenzie  delta,  Roxy  and  Sitsak  stopped 
frequently  to  climb  upon  little  hummocks  and  look  around 
and  talk  with  each  other,  I  did  not  guess  what  it  was  all 
about.  Finally  I  asked  Roxy  and  he  told  me  that  "may- 
be they  were  lost."  Little  by  little  the  doubt  on  this 
point  was  removed.  They  were  lost  sure  enough.  For 
two  days  we  wandered  aimlessly  up  one  river  channel 
and  down  another,  never  finding  out  exactly  where  we 
were  until  the  morning  of  the  third  day  when  we  came 
upon  a  sled  trail  and  soon  after  that  a  camp  site.  This 
was  our  old  trail  and  our  own  camp  of  two  days  before. 
We  had  been  traveling  in  various  curves  among  the  is- 
lands and  had  finally  happened  upon  our  own  trail.  Roxy 
and  Sitsak  now  agreed  that  at  the  time  when  we  made  this 
camp  we  had  not  yet  been  lost  and  that  we  must  have 
lost  the  way  a  little  beyond  that.  We  watched  carefully, 
accordingly,  and  sure  enough  after  following  our  old  trail 
four  or  five  miles  we  came  to  a  point  where  it  turned  to 
one  side  and  where  it  should  have  turned  to  the  other. 

A  river  delta  is  the  easiest  of  all  places  in  which  to 
lose  your  way.  A  little  farther  south  the  Mackenzie  delta 
is  thickly  forested  with  spruce  but,  where  we  were,  the 
islands  were  all  covered  with  willow.  The  spruce  islands 
can  be  traversed  by  sled,  although  with  difficulty,  but  the 
willow  islands  are  impassable,  for  the  vegetation  is  so 
tangled  that  even  in  summer  it  is  almost  impossible  to 
force  your  way  through.  The  shrubbery  commonly  varies 
in  height  from  four  to  eight  feet.  In  winter  this  brush 
retains  and  holds  up  such  masses  of  soft  snow  that  there 


LOST  IN  THE  MACKENZIE  DELTA         115 

is  no  thoroughfare  for  men  or  sledges.  You  must,  there- 
fore, thread  your  way  through  the  devious  channels  be- 
tween the  islands,  and  no  man  need  be  ashamed  of  get- 
ting lost,  especially  if  the  light  conditions  are  bad. 

It  was  now  the  time  when  the  sun  did  not  rise  at  all. 
Writers  of  arctic  romance  have  given  this  period  the  name 
of  "The  Great  Night"  but  that  is  really  a  misnomer,  con- 
veying a  wrong  impression.  We  were  only  about  a  hun- 
dred miles  north  of  the  arctic  circle  and  at  that  distance 
you  have  something  like  six  or  seven  hours  of  daylight 
clear  enough  for  reading  large  print  out  of  doors.  The 
sun  never  actually  rises,  but  at  noon  you  can  see  the  glow 
of  it  in  the  south  where  it  lies  about  as  far  below  the  hori- 
zon as  a  tropical  sun  would  be  ten  or  twenty  minutes 
after  sundown.  The  Mackenzie  Eskimos  when  traveling 
at  this  time  of  year  (and  it  is  their  favorite  time  for 
traveling)  ordinarily  get  up  about  one  or  two  o'clock  in 
the  morning  and  spend  three  or  four  hours  in  cooking  and 
in  their  usual  talkative  breakfasts.  They  then  hitch  up 
the  dogs  any  time  between  five  and  seven  o'clock  and  are 
on  the  road  sometime  before  the  faintest  dawning.  About 
noon  they  stop  so  as  to  have  plenty  of  daylight  for  mak- 
ing camp  and  feeding  the  dogs,  and  everything  is  snug 
and  comfortable  before  it  is  yet  dark.  On  cloudy  days 
we  sometimes  camp  as  early  as  ten  or  eleven  o'clock  in  the 
morning,  for  on  overcast  days  there  are  only  three  or 
four  hours  of  good  working  light.  Pitch  darkness  such 
as  we  have  in  the  tropics  or  "temperate"  lands  is  unknown 
in  the  Arctic,  for  even  on  a  cloudy  midwinter  night  there 
is  enough  light  from  the  stars  behind  the  clouds  reflected 
by  the  snow  on  the  ground  so  you  can  see  a  man  in  dark 
clothes  ten  to  fifty  feet  away. 

In  many  later  years  in  the  North  I  have  had  hundreds 


n6        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

of  different  Eskimo  traveling  companions  but  never  one 
with  such  contradictory  qualities  as  Roxy.  To  begin 
with,  he  was  about  the  cleverest  Eskimo  I  ever  saw.  In 
some  respects  he  was  not  far  from  being  a  confidence  man. 
As  he  had  shown  when  we  nearly  lost  our  lives  in  the 
autumn  gale,  he  had  unlimited  courage.  I  have  never 
known  any  one  upon  whose  quick  wit  and  decisive  action 
I  would  have  been  so  willing  to  rely  in  an  emergency  of 
life  and  death.  He  was  cheerful  under  misfortune  but 
sulky  and  morose  if  he  imagined  himself  to  have  a  griev- 
ance. In  some  ways  he  had  the  white  man's  point  of 
view  perfectly  after  his  long  association  with  the  whalers. 
In  ether  respects  his  Eskimo  mental  attitude  was  still  un- 
modified. 

I  had  a  good  example  of  the  Eskimo  point  of  view  when 
we  had  been  on  the  road  seven  days,  which  was  as  long  as 
the  entire  journey  to  Tuktuyaktok  had  been  estimated 
to  take.  On  account  of  having  lost  our  way  we  had  made 
only  half  the  distance.  The  snow  was  deeper  and  softer 
than  had  been  expected  and  we  were  moving  slowly.  I 
noticed  that  the  two  dogs  I  had  bought  from  Sten  were 
not  pulling  as  well  as  Roxy's  dogs.  When  I  remarked 
upon  this,  Roxy  said  rather  sulkily  that  it  was  no  wonder, 
for  the  poor  dogs  had  had  nothing  to  eat  for  several  days. 
This  astounded  me,  for  I  knew  that  there  was  still  some 
fish  on  our  sled,  nor  did  I  know  any  reason  why  there 
should  be  nothing  to  eat  for  my  dogs  when  his  were  well 
fed.  I  had  understood  it  to  be  a  part  of  our  bargain  that 
he  would  provide  all  the  dog  feed.  He  said,  however, 
that  his  bargain  had  been  that  he  would  supply  a  certain 
number  of  dogs  and  T  a  certain  number  and  that  it  was 
always  the  Eskimo  eustom  that  when  two  men  traveled 
together  each  supplied  food  for  his  own  dogs.    This  was 


LOST  IN  THE  MACKENZIE  DELTA         117 

all  the  more  confusing  because  he  had  explained  to  me 
earlier  in  the  year  the  Eskimo  communistic  idea  of  food, 
where  what  belongs  to  you  belongs  to  me  equally.  He 
now  told  me  that  this  form  of  food  communism  applied 
only  when  you  were  at  home.  He  said  (and  I  found  it 
later  to  be  true)  that  you  can  arrive  at  a  man's  house 
with  any  number  of  dogs  and  feed  them  and  your  party 
out  of  his  fish  pile.  But  when  you  leave  you  are  not 
entitled  to  take  with  you  any  of  his  fish  for  your  men  or 
your  dogs,  but  must  buy  what  you  want.  My  two  dogs 
could  have  eaten  at  his  fish  pile  all  winter  if  we  had  re- 
mained at  Shingle  Point,  but  on  a  journey  it  was  an 
entirely  different  thing. 

Roxy  now  seemed  to  be  angry  at  me  for  not  having 
brought  along  fish  for  my  own  dogs  and  also  apparently 
at  Sten  for  not  having  explained  to  me  that  it  was  neces- 
sary. He  said  that  he  had  fed  my  dogs  for  two  or  three 
days  at  the  beginning  of  the  journey  but  that  each  day  he 
had  done  so  he  had  become  more  angry  at  the  injustice 
of  being  compelled  to  do  it,  until  finally,  when  he  found 
we  were  lost  and  that  the  journey  was  going  to  be  longer 
than  we  expected,  he  had  stopped  feeding  them.  No  ar- 
guments of  mine  would  induce  him  to  feed  them  now.  I 
argued  the  less  because  he  said  it  was  his  intention  to  stop 
feeding  his  own  dogs  either  to-night  or  to-morrow  night. 
"For,"  he  said,  "dogs  are  more  used  than  men  to  going 
without  food.  They  can  stand  it  better,  and  anyway  we 
have  the  upper  hand  and  must  look  after  ourselves." 

Being  new  in  the  Arctic,  I  was  greatly  worried  by  the 
situation  and  began  to  picture  myself  heroically  starving 
to  death.  Of  course,  there  was  no  real  fear  of  this,  for 
it  was  only  seventy-five  miles  or  so  to  Tuktuyaktok. 
Roxy  now  told  me  that  he  thought  there  might  be  two 


u8        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

or  three  settlements  this  side  of  Tuktuyaktok,  in  which 
case  we  could  secure  food  that  much  sooner. 

It  was  not  long  after  I  noticed  the  slack  traces  of  my 
dogs  until  they  stopped  pulling  entirely.  Roxy  then  un- 
hitched them  and  let  them  follow  behind  the  sled.  From 
my  experience  with  the  Indians  up  the  river  and  from 
the  fact  also  that  Roxy  seemed  to  be  angry  not  only  at 
me  for  not  providing  dog  feed  but  also  at  my  dogs  for 
pulling  so  badly,  I  wondered  why  he  did  not  cut  a  willow 
switch  from  the  river  bank  and  try  to  whip  them  into 
pulling.  When  I  asked  him  about  it  he  said  that  whipping 
tired  dogs  was  one  of  the  white  man's  customs  which  he 
had  not  yet  learned.  The  Eskimo  idea  was  that  a  dog 
should  be  treated  with  great  consideration,  and  his  opin- 
ion was  that  a  good  dog  would  pull  about  as  long  as  he 
had  any  strength  without  being  whipped.  Whipping,  he 
said,  would  not  help  our  speed  much,  if  any,  but  would 
hurt  his  reputation  and  lower  his  standing  in  the  com- 
munity. He  told  me  that  the  only  approved  Eskimo 
method  of  inducing  dogs  to  work  is  either  by  shouting  to 
them  and  trying  to  cheer  them  up  by  the  voice,  or  else  by 
having  some  person  walk  ahead  0/  the  team  of  whom  the 
dogs  are  fond  so  that  they  will  pull  hard  to  try  to  keep  up. 

I  regret  to  say  that  during  the  twelve  years  following 
1906  the  Mackenzie  River  Eskimos  adopted  the  custom 
of  whipping  dogs,  so  that  when  I  was  among  them  last 
(191 8)  it  was  only  a  few  of  the  old  men  who  did  not 
do  so. 

Something  like  forty  miles  from  Tuktuyaktok  we  be- 
gan to  look  for  people  at  well-known  camp  sites,  but  all 
the  camps  turned  out  to  be  deserted.  We  were  thirty 
miles  away  when  our  dogs  had  become  so  weak  that  it 
was  necessary  to  leave  behind  most  of  our  belongings. 


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LOST  IN  THE  MACKENZIE  DELTA         119 

For  several  days  all  of  us  had  been  taking  turns  pulling 
on  the  sleds.  After  stopping  feeding  the  dogs,  we  still 
had  fish  enough  for  three  or  four  days  for  ourselves  at  a 
little  more  than  half  rations. 

Some  fifteen  miles  from  Tuktuyaktok  we  came  upon 
a  new  sled  trail.  When  the  dogs  got  the  strong  smell 
from  the  fresh  tracks  of  the  men  and  dogs,  they  inter- 
preted it  to  mean  food  and  began  to  pull  with  such  energy 
that  we  were  able  to  let  go  our  hauling  straps.  When  at 
last  the  houses  came  in  sight  the  people  there  soon  saw  us 
and  began  to  shout,  and  upon  hearing  this  the  dogs 
speeded  up  so  that  we  had  to  run  to  keep  up  with  them. 

When  we  got  within  about  half  a  mile  of  the  house  ten 
or  fifteen  people  came  running  out  to  meet  us.  At  their 
head  was  Ovayuak  who  welcomed  all  of  us  cordially  and 
me  even  more  effusively  than  the  others.  He  was  espe- 
cially cordial  when  Roxy  told  him  that  I  had  come  to 
spend  the  rest  of  the  winter  with  him  because  his  people 
still  lived  in  the  old  Eskimo  fashion. 


CHAPTER  XI 

AN   ARCTIC   CHRISTMAS   WITH  AN   ENGLISH   COUNTRY 

CENTLEMAN 

When  we  started  from  Shingle  Point  it  had  been  the 
understanding  that  after  a  few  days'  visit  with  Ovayuak, 
Roxy  would  take  me  to  Harrison's  camp  on  the  Eskimo 
Lakes,  two  or  three  days'  journey  south,  for  I  planned 
to  spend  Christmas  with  Harrison  and  then  come  back 
to  the  coast  to  live  the  rest  of  the  winter  at  Tuktuyaktok. 
But  shortly  after  we  arrived  Roxy  suggested  to  me  that 
Ovayuak  had  plenty  of  dogs  and  could  easily  take  me 
across  to  Harrison's,  while  his  own  dogs  were  tired  out 
and  weakened  by  having  gone  several  days  without  food. 
I  said  that  this  would  be  all  right  if  he  would  arrange  with 
Ovayuak  for  doing  it.  Roxy  replied  that  he  had  already 
spoken  to  Ovayuak  and  that  it  was  nothing  but  fun  for 
Ovayuak  or  one  of  his  men  to  make  the  trip  and  that 
it  had  been  agreed  between  them  that  I  was  to  pay  him 
(Roxy)  both  for  bringing  me  to  Tuktuyaktok  and  also 
for  taking  me  south  to  Harrison's.  Accordingly,  I  secured 
from  Ovayuak  the  sixty-pound  chest  of  tea  and  the  two 
Hudson's  Bay  blankets.  The  day  after  receiving  this 
pay  Roxy  and  Sitsak  started  back  for  the  camp  at  Shingle 
Point. 

The  week  before  Christmas,  I  asked  Ovayuak  one  day 
when  he  would  lake  me  over  to  Harrison's,  whereupon  he 
was  greatly  surprised  and  said  that  he  had  not  considered 
making  any  such  trip.    When  I  told  him  about  the  ar- 

I20 


AN  ARCTIC  CHRISTMAS  121 

rangements  which  Roxy  said  he  had  made,  Ovayuak 
laughed  uproariously  and  said  that  his  cousin  had  evi- 
dently been  up  to  his  old  tricks.  It  seemed  Roxy  had 
told  Ovayuak  that  I  wanted  to  stay  there  until  a  sled 
came  from  Harrison's  camp  to  fetch  me  or  until  I  could 
get  some  other  Eskimo  to  take  me  there.  Ovayuak  said 
I  was  welcome  to  stay  as  long  as  I  liked  but  that  he  had 
such  a  big  household  and  one  so  difficult  to  provide  for, 
that  he  would  have  to  fish  industriously  all  winter  and 
could  not  make  any  trips  until  after  the  sun  had  come 
back.  Then  he  was  going  to  Herschel  Island  to  see  his 
married  daughter  and  his  new-born  grand-daughter.  He 
did  not  think  any  of  the  people  now  living  at  Tuktuyaktok 
would  care  to  make  the  trip  to  Harrison's,  but  added 
that  there  were  others  traveling  up  and  down  the  coast 
every  week  or  so  and  probably  one  of  these  would  take 
me  there.  "Some  people,"  he  said,  "are  always  traveling 
and  there  are  many  who  don't  care  just  whom  they  visit 
or  in  what  direction  they  travel.  Some  of  these  will  turn 
up  soon  and  we  will  get  them  to  take  you  to  Harrison's." 

It  was  not  many  days  later  when  there  arrived  my  ac- 
quaintance from  Shingle  Point,  Ilavinirk  with  his  wife, 
Mamayauk,  and  their  four-year-old  daughter,  Noashak. 
Ovayuak  suggested  at  once  that  here  was  one  of  the  trav- 
eling type.  I  was  glad  to  see  Ilavinirk  for  this  reason 
and  also  because  I  had  liked  him  the  first  time  I  met  him. 
A  further  reason  was  that  he  brought  with  him  a  can  of 
salt  and  I  was  getting  exceedingly  salt  hungry. 

As  I  have  mentioned  earlier,  I  had  to  go  without  salt 
from  the  time  Harrison  left  us  at  Shingle  Point  until 
Sten  arrived.  Sten  had  plenty  of  salt  and  I  borrowed 
what  I  wanted  from  him,  but  when  we  left  Shingle  Point 
we  had  forgotten  to  take  any  along.    I  began  to  miss  it 


122        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

pretty  badly  on  the  way  down,  and  Roxy  consoled  me 
by  saying  that  Ovayuak  would  be  sure  to  have  some.  But 
when  we  got  to  Tuktuyaktok  we  found  that  Ovayuak 
hadn't  any.  He  said  that  ordinarily  Mr.  Firth  supplied 
him  with  some  as  a  part  of  his  trade  goods,  but  as  the 
Eskimos  never  cared  to  eat  salt  and  as  he  himself  never 
thought  of  asking  for  it,  it  happened  some  years  that  Mr. 
Firth  did  not  give  him  any.    This  was  one  of  those  years. 

In  that  connection  Ovayuak  raised  the  question  of 
whether  a  white  man  really  needs  salt  or  whether  the  salt 
habit  with  some  people  is  like  the  tobacco  habit  with 
others.  He  said  that  since  he  could  remember,  most  of 
the  Mackenzie  River  Eskimos  had  used  tobacco,  both 
men  and  women.  Mothers  frequently  teach  tobacco 
chewing  to  their  children  before  they  are  one  year  old, 
and  they  grow  up  to  be  exceedingly  fond  of  it.  In  fact, 
many  Eskimos  now  imagine  that  they  cannot  live  with- 
out it.  Ovayuak  had  heard,  however,  from  the  men  who 
were  old  when  he  was  a  boy,  that  in  their  childhood  no 
one  used  tobacco  and  that  when  tobacco  was  first  brought 
in  (which  I  estimate  to  have  been  about  1850)  everybody 
disliked  it.  Even  now  he  said  there  were  two  or  three 
Eskimos  who  did  not  use  tobacco  and  seemed  to  get  along 
just  as  well  as  the  others  who  did. 

On  the  other  hand  there  were  only  two  or  three  Eski- 
mos who  did  use  salt  and  the  great  majority  abhorred  it. 
The  common  Eskimo  belief  was  that  the  desire  for  salt 
was  peculiar  to  white  men,  but  he  himself  thought  it  was 
only  a  habit  almost  any  Eskimo  might  acquire.  Con- 
versely, he  thought  that  it  was  a  habit  which  any  white 
man  who  tried  could  probably  break,  and  he  suggested 
that  in  a  little  while  I  would  cease  craving  it. 

However,  I  had  not  stopped  worrying  when  Ilavinirk 


AN  ARCTIC  CHRISTMAS  123 

came,  and  when  Ovayuak  told  him  about  my  hankering 
for  salt  he  immediately  went  out  to  his  sled  and  brought 
in  half  a  baking  powder  tin  of  it.  At  this  I  was  over- 
joyed and  sprinkled  salt  liberally  on  my  fish  the  next 
meal.  I  was  a  bit  disappointed  to  find  the  fish  not  as 
much  improved  by  the  salt  as  I  had  expected.  That  did 
not  lessen  my  gratitude  to  Ilavinirk,  and  I  thought  that 
for  me  this  would  prove  the  beginning  of  better  times, 
for  used  by  me  alone  the  pound  or  two  of  salt  ought  to 
last  for  months. 

When  the  next  meal  came  I  was  interested  in  some- 
thing that  was  going  on  and  absentmindedly  ate  the  whole 
meal  without  recalling  till  the  end  that  I  had  put  no  salt 
on  my  fish.  This  made  me  realize  that  my  hankering 
for  salt  had  been  in  a  sense  imaginary.  I  had  really  been 
without  it  long  enough  already  to  break  myself  of  the 
habit  but  had  been  longing  for  it  because  I  imagined  I 
needed  it.  From  that  time  on  I  never  opened  the  salt 
can,  although  I  kept  it  with  me  in  case  I  should  want  it. 
A  month  or  two  later  I  lost  it,  nor  did  I  worry  at  all 
over  the  loss. 

It  turned  out  that  Ilavinirk  was  more  than  willing  to 
take  me  inland.  He  had  just  come  from  the  Eskimo 
Lakes  country  himself  where  he  had  been  living  less  than 
a  day's  journey  away  from  Harrison's  camp.  He  told 
me  that  his  camp  was  a  fine  fishing  location  if  you  got 
there  early  enough  in  the  fall.  He  had  arrived  too  late, 
however,  and  the  fish  run  had  been  nearly  over.  He 
caught  a  few  fish  and  hunted  caribou  without  success. 
He  had  snared  a  few  ptarmigan,  but  altogether  it  had 
proved  a  difficult  place  to  make  a  living  and  he  had  now 
just  abandoned  his  house  to  come  down  to  Ovayuak's 
to  live  on  fish  until  the  sun  came  back.    He  had,  however, 


124        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

left  some  gear  at  his  camp  and  this  he  would  be  able  to 
fetch  back  with  him  on  his  return  after  delivering  me  to 
Harrison's.  Some  of  his  best  friends  also  lived  on  the 
Eskimo  Lakes  and  he  would  be  glad  to  visit  them  and 
introduce  me  to  them. 

The  territory  we  traveled  through  going  south  from  the 
seacoast  towards  the  Eskimo  Lakes  reminded  me  of  the 
North  Dakota  prairies  where  we  used  to  have  our  cattle 
ranch.  There  was  snow  on  the  ground,  of  course,  but 
rather  less  than  there  would  have  been  in  North  Dakota 
at  the  corresponding  time  of  year,  and  the  grass  was 
sticking  up  here  and  there  through  the  snow.  It  was 
evident  that  if  the  winter  resemblance  between  an  arctic 
and  a  Dakota  prairie  was  close,  the  summer  resemblance 
would  be  equally  great,  and  this  I  have  since  found  to  be 
the  case. 

Our  first  day  was  a  short  one,  only  about  ten  or  twelve 
miles,  and  we  came  to  the  trapping  camp  of  a  single 
family  that  lived  in  a  creek  bed  well  stocked  with  willows. 
Although  few  of  these  were  more  than  six  or  eight  feet 
high,  they  gave  an  adequate  fuel  supply.  As  for  shelter 
from  winter  blizzards,  that  is  something  the  Eskimos 
cannot  imagine  to  be  necessary.  If  they  need  a  shelter 
for  the  house  they  can  always  build  a  semi-circular  wind- 
break wall  of  snow  blocks  in  an  hour  or  two  that  gives 
not  only  protection  but  also  directs  the  snow  so  that  the 
blizzard  piles  it  into  drifts  at  some  distance  from  the 
house  where  it  will  be  in  nobody's  way. 

The  next  day  wc  reached  the  first  camp  in  the  Eskimo 
Lakes  country  where  we  found  Sten's  brother-in-law 
Kunak  with  his  family  occupying  half  of  a  big  house, 
and  another  Alaska  family  occupying  the  other  half. 
Their  house  was  not  the  regular  beehive  type  used  by  the 


AN  ARCTIC  CHRISTMAS  125 

hunters  in  the  mountains,  from  whom  we  had  fetched  the 
caribou  meat  in  October.  It  stood  just  within  the  fringe 
of  spruce  trees  that  surround  the  Eskimo  Lakes.  Well 
formed  trees  thirty  and  forty  feet  in  height  are  not  rare. 
From  these  white  men  could  easily  build  log  cabins  of 
the  type  we  have  all  seen  either  in  pictures  or  otherwise. 
That  sort  of  cabin,  as  I  know  from  ample  experience, 
takes  a  long  time  to  erect  and  is  difficult  to  build  so  well 
that  it  keeps  out  the  cold  adequately.  Three  or  four 
Eskimos  can  build  in  a  day  or  two  as  big  a  house  as  three 
or  four  white  men  could  build  in  a  week  or  two  and  the 
Eskimo  house  will  be  much  warmer. 

The  chief  reason  for  the  ease  of  making  the  Eskimo 
house  is  that  the  walls  instead  of  being  vertical,  slant  in 
just  a  little.  If  a  house  has  a  vertical  wall  and  if  you 
try  to  make  it  warmer  by  building  a  sod  wall  outside  of 
it,  then  it  takes  great  skill  as  well  as  good  sods  to  build 
in  such  a  way  that  there  is  not  an  open  space  between  the 
frame  and  the  sod.  But  if  the  wall  of  the  framework 
leans  in  a  little,  you  can  heap  sods  and  earth  up  against  it 
any  old  way  and  the  sods  will  hug  the  frame.  Kunak  told 
me  that  it  had  taken  him  and  the  other  man  three  days 
to  build  this  house.  It  was  hexagonal  in  outline,  about 
twenty-two  feet  in  length,  and  fifteen  in  width.  The 
frame  of  the  walls  was  of  spruce  and  the  roof  was  of 
split  spruce  logs.  Outside  this  the  walls  were  of  earth, 
with  a  roof  covering  of  moss  and  a  layer  of  earth  over 
that.  There  was  a  great  stone  fireplace  in  the  center  of 
the  house  directly  under  the  parchment  skylight. 

This  was  the  first  Eskimo  house  I  had  seen  that  had 
windows  also  in  the  walls.  Each  was  made  of  a  single 
pane  of  ice  about  an  inch  thick,  two  feet  wide  and  four 
feet  high,  with  the  lower  edge  level  with  the  floor.    Al- 


126        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

though  the  house  temperature  seldom  fell  below  70°  these 
windows  did  not  melt,  for  they  were  kept  hard  by  the 
outdoors  frost  which  now  averaged  about  30  °  Fahrenheit 
below  zero.  On  an  occasional  warm  day  it  was  necessary, 
Kunak  told  me,  to  curtain  them  off  with  a  blanket  to 
protect  them  from  being  thawed  by  the  heat  of  the 
interior. 

After  a  pleasant  visit  at  Kunak's  house,  we  traveled 
next  day  something  like  twelve  miles  across  one  of  the 
Eskimo  Lakes  to  the  journey's  end.  Our  arrival  seemed 
both  to  surprise  and  delight  Harrison,  who  was  having 
rather  a  lonesome  time,  for  Kakotok,  with  whose  family 
he  was  living,  knew  scarcely  a  word  of  English  and  Har- 
rison had  not  mastered  even  the  Eskimo  jargon.  It  may 
have  been  because  of  his  bringing  up  as  an  English  coun- 
try gentleman  or  because  of  a  naturally  aloof  disposition 
that  he  was  living  in  one  house  with  his  Eskimo  servants 
in  another,  on  terms  about  as  intimate  as  if  they  were 
neighbors  in  a  suburb.  Getting  some  one  to  talk  with 
was  a  relief  to  Harrison.  It  was  added  good  luck  that 
both  of  us  were  fond  of  chess,  which  helped  pass  the  time. 
He  was  a  very  good  chess  player. 

Ilavinirk  had  told  me  that  he  had  had  to  abandon  the 
idea  of  spending  the  winter  on  the  Eskimo  Lakes  because 
of  the  poor  fishing.  I  now  asked  Kakotok  about  the  fish- 
ing at  Harrison's  camp  and  found  that,  although  it  had 
been  much  better  than  llavinirk's,  still  it  was  getting 
worse  every  day,  and  he  much  feared  that  they  also  would 
have  to  leave  the  lakes  and  come  down  to  the  coast.  He 
felt  sure  they  would  cither  have  to  do  this  or  else  go  with 
the  dog  teams  on  a  journey  to  the  coast,  spending  a  month 
or  so  and  leaving  only  some  of  the  family  to  keep  the 
camp  in  the  forest.     The  feeding  of  the  dogs  through 


AN  ARCTIC  CHRISTMAS  127 

the  midwinter  is  the  chief  worry  of  the  Eskimos  in  those 
seasons  when  food  is  scarce.  Kakotok  said  that  their 
shortage  of  food  was  due  to  late  arrival  at  the  Eskimo 
Lakes  in  the  fall.  Had  they  come  two  or  three  weeks 
earlier,  he  considered  that  they  would  have  had  no  trouble 
in  getting  all  the  food  that  they  could  possibly  have 
needed  for  the  winter. 

Ilavinirk  and  Kakotok  agreed,  and  my  whole  observa- 
tion since  has  confirmed  it,  that  to  make  a  living  in  the 
Mackenzie  district  you  should  follow  the  well-known  prin- 
ciple of  making  hay  while  the  sun  shines — which  here 
means  fishing  in  the  fishing  season.  But  throughout  the 
preceding  winter  they  had  been  accumulating  fox  skins 
and  other  things  which  they  wanted  to  sell  during  the 
summer.  The  cargoes  of  trade  goods  from  Edmonton 
ordinarily  arrive  at  Macpherson  early  in  July,  and  the 
traders  that  come  in  through  Bering  Straits  arrive  at 
Herschel  Island  late  in  July  or  sometime  in  August.  In 
some  places,  such  as  Shingle  Point,  you  cannot  fish  very 
well  until  the  nights  turn  dark.  But  there  are  many  other 
places  where  the  water  is  muddy  and  the  fishing  good 
even  during  the  summer  of  perpetual  daylight.  That  is 
the  logical  harvest  season,  but  the  Eskimos  are  then  off  on 
their  trading  journeys  to  Fort  Macpherson  or  Herschel 
Island.  Many  of  them  want  to  visit  both  places.  If 
the  season  happens  to  be  late,  as  it  was  my  first  summer 
there,  the  Eskimos  hang  around  Herschel  Island  until 
the  end  of  August.  Harrison  and  I  had  hung  around 
there  with  them,  and  so  we  did  not  leave  for  the  fishing 
grounds  until  it  was  too  late  for  either  the  Eskimos  or 
Harrison  to  lay  up  a  suitable  supply. 

I  used  to  go  with  Kakotok  to  see  how  he  fished.  There 
were  two  methods  in  use  on  the  Eskimo  Lakes.     One 


128        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

was  very  simple  and  depended  on  a  little  open  patch 
where  the  water  flows  out  of  the  lake  into  the  river  that 
takes  it  to  the  sea.  Here  the  rapid  current  prevents  the 
formation  of  ice  in  even  the  coldest  weather,  and  nets  can 
be  set  exactly  as  in  summer.  In  other  places  the  nets 
had  to  be  set  through  the  ice. 

In    getting    ready    to    fish    through    ice    you    fasten 
your  floats  to  one  edge  of  the  net  and  your  sinkers  to 
the  other,  so  that  one  edge  of  the  net  shall  be  held  at 
the  surface  of  the  water  and  the  other  down  vertically. 
Then  you  cut  two  holes  in  the  ice  about  forty  feet  apart 
(for  that  is  a  common  length  for  Eskimo  nets)  and  each 
a  foot  or  eighteen  inches  in  diameter.    Between  these  two 
holes  you  cut  a  series  of  smaller  holes  just  big  enough  to 
stick  your  arm  into  the  water,  and  perhaps  six  or  eight 
feet  apart.    Next  you  take  a  stick  of  dry,  buoyant  wood 
that  is  eight  or  ten  feet  long.    You  shove  it  down  through 
one  of  the  end  holes  until  it  is  all  in  the  water,  when  it 
floats  up  and  rises  against  the  ice.     You  have  a  string 
tied  to  the  stick  and  this  sti  ing  you  fasten  to  one  end  of 
the  net.    Then  you  lay  the  stick  so  that,  while  one  end 
is  still  visible  at  your  hole,  the  other  end  is  visible  below 
the  next  hole  six  or  eight  feet  away.    You  now  go  to  the 
second  hole,  put  your  hand  into  the  water  and  slide  the 
stick  along  under  the  ice  until  you  can  see  it  through  the 
third  hole.    The  stick,  of  course,  pulls  the  string  in  after 
it  and  by  the  time  you  have  worked  the  stick  along  to 
the  furthest  hole  your  ret  is  set.    You  now  take  a  rope 
that  is  about  ten  feet  longer  than  the  net  and  tie  each  end 
of  th(  mp<  to  one  end  of  the  net  so  as  to  make  an  "end- 
less chain,"  the  net  beinr;  under  the  water  and  the  rope 
on  top  of  the  ice. 

During  the  night  the  holes  all  freeze  over.    You  allow 


AN  ARCTIC  CHRISTMAS  129 

the  small  holes  to  remain  frozen  permanently  but  each 
time  you  go  out  to  tend  the  net  you  open  the  two  end 
holes  and  pull  the  net  out  of  one  of  them.  As  you  pull 
the  net  out  the  rope  part  of  your  endless  chain  is  pulled 
into  the  water.  When  you  have  picked  all  the  fish  out 
of  the  net,  you  pull  on  your  rope  and  thus  drag  the  net 
back  into  the  water. 

I  am  lucky  in  having  hands  that  stand  cold  pretty 
well,  but  when  I  came  to  help  Kakotok  pick  fish  out  of 
a  net  at  forty  below  zero  I  found  it  the  coldest  job  I  had 
ever  tried.  We  dragged  the  whole  net  up  on  the  ice  and 
the  wriggling  fish  soon  got  themselves  all  covered  with 
snow.  This  turned  into  slush  on  their  wet  bodies.  A 
fish  feels  cold  enough  at  best  but  these  felt  particularly 
chilly. 

It  does  not  make  any  difference  if  the  net  all  freezes 
into  lumps  while  you  are  getting  the  fish  out.  Our  net 
got  so  balled  up  with  snow  and  slush  which  turned  into 
ice  that  if  it  had  remained  in  that  condition  it  would  have 
caught  no  fish  after  being  put  back  into  the  water.  Ka- 
kotok told  me,  however,  that  the  water  in  the  lake  was 
warm  enough  to  melt  the  ice  off  the  net,  whereupon  the 
strain  between  the  floats  and  the  sinkers  compelled  the 
net  to  take  its  proper  vertical  position  in  the  water. 

Kakotok  was  setting  three  nets  and  he  got  from  twenty 
to  fifty  fish  a  day,  ranging  in  weight  from  one  to  four 
or  five  pounds.  This  was  about  as  much  as  the  men 
and  dogs  of  the  household  were  eating,  and  when  visitors 
came  the  camp  ran  behind  to  the  amount  eaten  by  the 
visiting  men  and  dogs.  This  made  evident  the  validity 
of  what  Kakotok  had  told  me,  that  they  would  either  have 
to  abandon  the  camp  entirely  or  else  some  of  the  family 
would  have  to  go  off  on  a  visit,  taking  away  the  dogs 


130        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

and  leaving  only  one  to  two  persons  to  tend  the  nets. 
That  way  several  hundred  fish  could  be  accumulated 
against  the  return  of  the  party  from  the  coast. 

In  the  books  I  had  read  about  the  Eskimos  I  had  al- 
ways been  impressed  with  how  lonesome  and  depressing 
it  must  be  to  spend  the  several  weeks  of  midwinter  with- 
out one  ray  of  sunlight.  This  had  been  worrying  me  a 
great  deal  even  before  the  sun  disappeared,  but  Roxy 
had  told  me  that  he  had  never  heard  of  any  Eskimos 
who  minded  the  absence  of  the  sun,  and  had  added  that 
all  white  men  got  used  to  it  after  a  year  or  two.  Sten 
had  confirmed  this  and,  altogether,  I  had  gathered  from 
him  and  the  Eskimos  that  in  the  Arctic  the  period  of  the 
sun's  absence  is  looked  forward  to  by  everybody  and  is 
the  jolliest  time  of  the  year. 

It  is  not  that  the  whites  and  Eskimos  that  live  in  the 
Far  North  prefer  darkness  to  daylight;  neither  do  we  in 
the  big  cities  prefer  stifling  August  to  the  moderate  days 
of  May  or  September.  Still,  there  are  many  of  us  who 
look  forward  to  August  because,  although  it  is  disagree- 
able in  weather,  it  is  agreeable  in  being  the  vacation  time. 
That  seems  to  be  about  the  Eskimo  point  of  view.  In 
midwinter  it  is  almost  impossible  to  hunt  caribou  or  moun- 
tain sheep  and  less  pleasant  than  usual  to  fish  or  to  trap. 
Accordingly,  they  make  it  the  vacation  time  and  utilize 
it  for  taking  long  journeys  and  for  dancing,  singing,  and 
general  rejoicing. 

I  understood  already  that  this  was  the  attitude  of  the 
Eskimos  and  of  such  white  men  as  Sten  who  had  lived 
there  for  many  years.  For  myself  I  was  so  impressed 
with  thi'  idea  that  I  would  find  the  winter  depressing 
that  I  really  found  it  so — at  least  occasionally  when  I 
had  time  to  think  about  it.    Harrison  was  a  good  mathe- 


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AN  ARCTIC  CHRISTMAS  131 

matician  and  enjoyed  calculations  and  plottings.  He  had 
it  estimated  that  in  our  particular  location  the  hills  to 
the  south  were  just  so  high  and  the  hills  at  our  camp 
were  of  just  such  another  height,  and  accordingly  the 
sun  would  appear  above  the  horizon  the  15th  of  January, 
if  the  temperature  was  about  zero,  and  probably  a  day 
or  even  two  days  earlier  if  the  temperature  should  be 
thirty  or  forty  below  zero.  I  accordingly  climbed  to  the 
top  of  the  highest  nearby  hill  on  the  15th,  and  sure 
enough,  saw  half  the  sun  above  the  horizon.  I  then 
went  home  and  wrote  a  long  entry  in  my  diary,  telling 
how  glad  I  wras  to  have  the  sun  back.  My  joy  was  real, 
but  I  now  think  that  the  preceding  depression  and  the 
consequent  relief  when  the  sun  came  back  were  largely 
due  to  my  imagination.  I  had  read  in  the  books  that  I 
was  going  to  be  depressed.  Had  the  books  said  nothing 
about  it,  I  think  I  should  have  failed  to  notice  it.  Any- 
way, I  have  since  spent  nine  winters  in  the  North  and 
have  never  again  felt  any  particular  exhilaration  at  the 
return  of  the  sun.  I  have  always  been  glad,  however,  to 
see  it  rising  higher  and  higher  in  the  sky,  for,  although 
the  two  or  three  months  following  its  return  are  the 
coldest  of  the  arctic  winter,  they  are  on  the  whole  much 
the  pleasantest  part  of  the  year,  especially  for  one  who 
enjoys  activity  and  wants  to  work  outdoors  all  the  time. 
By  the  middle  of  January  Mr.  Harrison's  fish  pile 
was  getting  noticeably  smaller.  He  had  a  little  flour, 
just  enough  to  make  you  wish  you  had  more  bread  with 
your  fish.  We  could  not  eat  more  bread  than  we  did  or 
it  would  not  have  lasted  him  till  spring.  He  was  anxious 
to  have  it  last,  for  he  had  the  view  (which  I  have  since 
found  to  be  the  opposite  of  practical)  that  it  was  best 
to  save  such  delicacies  as  you  had  so  as  to  have  a  little 


132        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

every  day.  With  men  who  are  fonder  of  bread  than  they 
are  of  fish  or  meat,  it  is  simplest  to  let  them  eat  up  the 
flour  as  fast  as  they  like.  When  it  is  gone  they  worry 
for  two  or  three  weeks  and  then  forget  all  about  it.  But 
if  they  have  a  little  taste  every  day,  they  worry  every  day 
and  every  meal  because  they  have  less  than  enough. 

To  remove  temporarily  from  his  fish  supply  the  burden 
of  all  the  dogs,  and  also  to  deliver  me  back  at  Tuktuyak- 
tok,  Harrison  and  his  party  left  for  the  coast  on  January 
26,  and  three  days  later  we  were  welcomed  by  Ovayuak 
at  Tuktuyaktok. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  LIFE  AT  TUKTUYAKTOK 

It  was  only  after  my  return  to  Tuktuyaktok  that  I  be- 
gan to  live  like  a  real  Eskimo.  Up  to  this  time  there  had 
always  been  some  difference  between  me  and  the  natives. 
Sometimes  I  had  salt  when  they  had  none,  and  generally 
my  fish  had  been  cooked  in  a  special  way.  When  they 
had  been  eating  theirs  boiled  or  raw  frozen,  mine  had 
been  roasted  or  baked ;  and  when  they  ate  heads,  I  seldom 
joined  them  although  occasionally  I  allowed  myself  to 
be  coaxed  to  taste  this  great  delicacy  of  theirs.  Ovayuak 
told  me  now  that  he  would  have  things  specially  prepared 
for  me  if  I  wished  it,  but  I  decided  to  stop  pampering 
myself,  partly  because  it  was  a  bother  for  the  Eskimos  to 
look  after  me  specially  and  partly  because  I  wanted  to 
live  exactly  as  they  did  so  as  to  get  their  point  of  view. 

The  house  we  lived  in  had  a  framework  of  driftwood 
and  the  roof  was  supported  by  numerous  wooden  pillars* 
The  earthen  walls  were  five  or  six  feet  thick  at  the  base 
and  became  thinner  towards  the  top  of  the  wall,  which  was 
only  about  five  feet  high.  Then  the  roof  sloped  up  from 
all  sides  in  "cottage"  fashion,  and  at  the  peak  was  a  level 
square  space  about  six  feet  each  way.  There  was  about 
a  foot  of  earth  on  top  of  the  roof  planking.  In  the  center 
of  the  roof  was  a  window  about  three  feet  in  diameter, 
made  by  sewing  together  translucent  strips  of  polar  bear 
intestines.  On  a  clear  day  in  midwinter  this  window 
gave  enough  light  so  that  all  the  lamps  could  have  been 
extinguished  for  about  four  hours. 

133 


134        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

The  lamps  never  were  extinguish  °d,  for  we  needed  them 
for  heat.  Usually  there  were  three  or  four  of  them 
burning,  each  in  a  corner  of  the  house.  They  were  huge, 
half-moon  shaped  bowls  that  had  been  adzed  out  of  blocks 
of  soapstone.  The  wick  was  a  ridge  of  powder  lying 
along  the  straight  edge  of  the  lamp.  This  powder  was 
sometimes  hard  wood  sawdust,  sometimes  powder  made 
by  scraping  or  sawing  walrus  ivory  and  sometimes  it  was 
dried  moss  that  had  been  rubbed  into  powder  between  the 
hands.  Occasionally  if  other  materials  gave  out,  they 
would  take  small  pieces  of  manila  rope  that  had  been 
secured  from  the  whalers,  and  hack  the  fibers  into  lengths 
of  one-twentieth  of  an  inch  or  less,  thus  practically  con- 
verting the  fibers  into  powder.  Sometimes  we  tried  to 
use  ordinary  commercial  lamp  wicks  but  they  were  much 
more  difficult  to  keep  burning  properly,  for  the  Eskimo 
women  are  very  particular  that  the  lamp  shall  never 
smoke  the  least  bit.  No  duty  of  a  housekeeper  is  more 
important  than  to  keep  the  lamp  well  trimmed. 

For  ideal  burning  the  bowl  of  the  lamp  must  always  be 
almost  full  of  oil  but  never  quite  full.  This  is  regulated 
in  a  simple  automatic  way.  A  slab  of  polar  bear  or  seal 
fat  is  hung  almost  over  the  flame.  If  the  oil  in  the  lamp 
gets  a  little  too  low,  there  is  more  of  the  lamp  wick  ex- 
posed and  the  flame  becomes  bigger.  The  increased  heat 
of  the  flame  tries  out  the  fat  hanging  over  the  lamp  and 
makes  the  oil  trickle  down  more  rapidly.  This  gradually 
raises  the  level  of  the  oil  in  the  bowl  until  it  floods  part 
of  the  wick  and  decreases  in  that  way  the  size  of  the 
flame.  This  cools  off  the  vicinity  of  the  lamp  enough 
so  that  the  slab  of  blubber  stops  dripping.  Then  the 
flame  gradually  increases  in  size  as  the  oil  lowers  in  the 
lamp  until  a  second  flaring  up  again  brings  streams  of 


THE  LIFE  AT  TUKTUYAKTOK  135 

oil  down  from  the  slab  of  fat.  A  lamp  once  properly 
prepared  in  this  way  will  burn  with  regular  fluctuations 
six  or  eight  hours  at  a  time. 

Ordinarily  the  lamps  that  are  properly  trimmed  when 
people  go  to  bed  in  the  evening  are  still  burning  brightly 
the  next  morning.  Occasionally,  however,  some  woman 
forgets  to  put  quite  enough  blubber  on  the  hook  above  the 
lamp.  In  that  case  the  lamp  will  begin  to  smoke  during 
the  night.  I  do  not  think  the  Eskimos  have  keener  ears 
or  keener  eyes  than  Europeans,  but  they  certainly  have 
a  much  more  delicate  sense  of  smell.  The  least  bit  of 
smoke  in  the  house  will  wake  up  somebody  who  shouts 
to  the  particular  woman  that  her  lamp  is  smoking  and 
warning  her  to  look  after  it. 

Because  the  walls  and  roof  of  the  house  were  so  thick, 
scarcely  any  cold  penetrated  in  to  us  that  way  and  the 
only  chill  came  by  way  of  the  fresh  air  that  ventilated 
the  house.  The  floor  of  the  dwelling  was  level  with  the 
ground  outside.  The  entrance  was  a  kind  of  tunnel  about 
thirty  feet  long  and  covered  by  a  shed.  The  tunnel  was 
about  four  feet  deep  where  it  came  in  under  the  house 
wall,  so  that  you  had  to  stoop  low  to  enter.  Once  inside 
the  wall,  you  could  stand  up  in  the  end  of  the  tunnel 
with  your  shoulders  in  the  house.  We  spoke  of  this  en- 
trance as  the  door,  but  it  was  really  only  a  square  hole 
in  the  floor  about  four  feet  in  diameter.  There  was  a  lid 
available  with  which  to  cover  the  door,  but  I  never  saw 
it  used.  The  temperature  in  the  alleyway  was  about  as 
cold  as  outdoors  but  our  house  was  so  full  of  warm  air 
that  the  cold  air  in  the  alleyway  could  not  enter,  for  cold 
air  is  heavy  and  will  not  rise  into  any  space  occupied  by 
warm  air. 

In  the  roof  we  had  a  ventilator  about  four  inches  in 


136        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

diameter.  The  even  flame  of  the  lamps  kept  the  tempera- 
ture of  the  house  day  and  night  fluctuating  somewhere 
between  75°  and  85  °  Fahrenheit.  We  had  a  stove  but 
this  was  never  used  except  for  cooking,  and  that  com- 
monly only  for  a  period  of  two  or  three  hours  in  the 
afternoon.  At  that  time  the  temperature  of  the  house 
rose  to  the  vicinity  of  ioo°  and  sometimes  above.  It  was 
much  like  living  in  a  Turkish  bath.  But  with  the  house 
at  such  a  temperature  and  the  air  outdoors  perhaps  40  ° 
below  zero,  there  was  so  much  difference  in  weight  be- 
tween the  outdoors  atmosphere  and  the  air  in  the  house 
that  the  pressure  through  the  door  was  strong  enough 
to  drive  the  warm  air  out  through  the  ventilator  with  the 
torce  of  a  blast.  I  once  went  on  top  of  the  house,  held 
my  hand  over  the  ventilator  to  test  the  draught,  and  got 
the  effect  of  a  strong  wind  blowing.  This  showed  the 
house,  although  stifling  hot,  was  well  ventilated. 

Before  coming  to  live  with  the  Eskimos  I  had  heard 
much  about  the  bad  smell  of  their  houses  and  at  first  it 
seemed  to  me  that  they  did  smell  bad.  I  soon  came  to 
realize,  however,  that  this  was  only  the  odor  of  the 
food  they  ate,  corresponding  to  the  odor  of  coffee  or  bacon 
in  our  houses,  or  perhaps  to  the  odor  of  garlic  in  the 
homes  of  certain  Italians.  If  you  are  fond  of  bacon  or 
coffee  or  garlic  you  do  not  dislike  the  smell.  Similarly, 
I  found  that  as  I  gradually  became  used  to  the  Eskimo 
food  and  finally  fond  of  it,  these  odors  changed  from  their 
original  unpleasantness  until  1  eventually  grew  to  relish 
them  as  much  when  I  came  in  hungry  from  out  of  doors 
as  a  hungry  camper  in  the  woods  relishes  the  smell  of 
frying  bacon. 

Our  house  had  a  square  Open  floor  space  in  the  middle 
about  twelve  feet  by  twelve.     In  three  directions  from 


THE  LIFE  AT  TUKTUYAKTOK  137 

this  ran  three  alcoves,  so  that  the  ground  plan  of  the 
house  was  not  very  different  from  the  club  in  playing 
cards.  In  each  one  of  the  three  alcoves  was  a  sleeping 
platform  about  eight  inches  higher  than  the  floor.  Out 
of  one  alcove  there  led  a  door  communicating  with  a 
separate  house  occupied  by  an  uncle  of  Ovayuak's,  with 
his  wife  and  family.  In  our  big  house  and  in  this  little 
connected  house  we  were  twenty-three  all  together,  not 
counting  visitors  and  there  were  visitors  nearly  every 
night.  There  was  just  room  on  the  bed  platforms  for  all 
but  me  to  sleep,  and  when  every  one  else  had  gone  to  bed 
I  used  to  spread  my  blankets  on  the  floor  near  the  door 
so  as  to  be  where  it  was  as  cool  as  possible.  Whenever 
there  were  visitors  there  were  others  besides  me  sleeping 
on  the  open  floor  space. 

There  is  very  little  furniture  in  an  Eskimo  house.  They 
have  the  sensible  way  of  getting  along  with  the  least 
possible,  and  much  of  what  they  do  use  they  use  only 
temporarily  and  then  take  it  out  of  doors.  Ordinarily 
there  is  in  the  alleyway  leading  out  from  the  Eskimo 
house  a  side  chamber  where  certain  articles  of  furniture 
are  kept  that  are  frequently  used.  Whenever  one  is 
needed  somebody  goes  to  bring  it  in.  Other  things  less 
frequently  used  are  kept  on  an  elevated  platform  outside 
the  house.  Here  are  kept  also  the  food  and  any  property 
the  people  may  own,  such  as  rifles  that  are  not  in  use, 
bolts  of  cloth  purchased  from  the  whalers,  or  the  like. 

But  it  is  the  custom  to  keep  in  the  house  the  cooking 
gear  and  the  little  movable  tables  upon  which  the  food  is 
prepared  and  eaten.  These  took  up  some  floor  space  and 
so  did  our  sheet-iron  stove  that  was  used  for  cooking. 
When  visitors  were  numerous  the  tables  were  moved  out 
into  the  alleyway,  and  occasionally  the  stove  also  had  to 


138        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

be  taken  down  and  moved  out  so  as  to  give  sleeping  room. 
If  that  did  not  suffice,  then  the  visitors  had  to  make  a 
camp  of  their  own  outside,  coming  into  our  house  to  visit 
and  join  us  at  meals. 

I  found  nothing  so  hard  to  get  used  to  as  the  excessive 
heat  at  night.  The  Eskimos  take  off  all  their  clothing 
and  sleep  under  some  light  cover.  Being  lower  down  and 
nearer  the  door  than  the  rest,  I  was  a  little  cooler  and 
soon  got  so  I  found  it  tolerable.  Eventually  I  became 
so  reconciled  to  the  excessive  heat  that  I  almost  liked 
it. 

There  was  no  regular  time  of  getting  up  in  the  morning. 
Most  of  these  Eskimos  were  great  smokers  and  I  used  to 
be  wakened  by  the  crackling  of  a  match  at  perhaps  four 
or  five  o'clock  when  somebody  woke  up  to  have  a  smoke. 
Commonly  those  earliest  ones  took  a  few  puffs  at  their 
pipes  and  then  went  to  sleep  again.  But  about  five  or 
six  o'clock  some  smoker  would  not  go  to  sleep  but  would 
instead  open  a  conversation  with  another  smoker.  The 
bed  platforms  were  wider  towards  the  center  of  the  house 
than  they  were  towards  the  walls,  so  that  all  the  people 
slept  with  their  heads  towards  the  center  of  the  house. 
This  made  it  easy  for  a  man  to  rise  on  his  elbow  and  talk 
to  somebody  across  the  floor. 

After  half  an  hour  or  so  of  conversation  in  which  more 
and  more  people  joined,  somebody  would  finally  say  that 
it  was  time  to  be  having  breakfast.  Then  would  arise 
a  discussion  among  the  women  as  to  which  of  them  should 
go  out  and  fetch  the  fish.  This  was  all  amiable  and  with 
a  great  deal  of  laughter.  When  two  or  three  women  had 
been  decided  on,  they  would  generally  have  a  race  to  see 
which  could  dress  the  fastest.  Putting  on  Eskimo  clothes 
is  about  as  simple  as  it  is  for  firemen  to  dress.    There 


THE  LIFE  AT  TUKTUYAKTOK  139 

are  no  buckles,  everything  slips  on  easily,  and  the  only 
things  to  be  fastened  are  belts  and  drawstrings.  There 
are  some  slight  differences  in  the  clothes  of  men  and 
women  but  they  are  about  equally  easy  to  put  on. 

I  never  actually  timed  these  breakfast-getters  but  I  do 
not  think  it  took  them  more  than  from  thirty  to  forty-five 
seconds  to  get  completely  dressed.  Then  they  ran  out 
and  presently  returned  with  armfuls  of  frozen  fish,  car- 
ried somewhat  as  a  farmer  carries  an  armful  of  firewood. 
The  fish  were  thrown  upon  the  floor  with  a  clatter  and 
more  conversation  went  on  for  about  half  an  hour,  until 
it  was  considered  that  the  fish  were  suitably  thawed. 
Then  the  women  would  take  their  half-moon  shaped 
knives  and  cut  off  the  heads  of  the  fish,  to  be  saved  till 
the  afternoon's  cooking.  Then  they  would  run  a  straight 
cut  along  the  back  of  each  fish  from  neck  to  tail,  and 
another  along  the  belly.  They  would  then  take  one 
corner  of  the  skin  between  their  teeth  and  strip  it  off 
somewhat  as  one  might  a  banana,  if  one  did  strip  a  banana 
with  his  teeth.  If  the  fish  were  large,  they  were  cut  into 
segments  but  if  they  weighed  no  more  than  a  pound  or 
two  they  were  left  in  one  piece. 

In  a  big  family  like  ours  the  fish  was  put  on  several 
platters  so  that  no  one  would  have  too  far  to  reach.  Be- 
fore the  platters  were  distributed  Ovayuak's  wife  used 
to  look  them  over  and  pick  out  the  best  pieces  for  the 
children,  for  it  is  the  custom  that  in  all  things  children 
are  more  favored  than  even  the  most  influential  member 
of  the  family  or  the  most  respected  visitor.  Next  after 
the  children  the  visitors  would  have  their  choice  in  a  fam- 
ily where  one  fish  tray  served,  but  in  a  big  family  they 
take  their  chances  more  or  less.  If  there  are  three  sleep- 
ing platforms  there  would  be  a  separate  tray  for  each 


i4o        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

platform,  and  the  visitors  would  share  with  those  members 
of  the  family  that  slept  on  that  platform. 

We  did  not  commence  eating  until  the  fish  were  nearly 
thawed,  so  that  their  flesh  was  not  much  harder  than 
typical  ice  cream.  We  ate  as  much  as  we  liked  of  any 
piece  and  then  put  the  remainder  back  on  the  tray  or  into 
another  tray.  Eskimos  are  careful  that  no  food  goes  to 
waste,  but  leaving  half  your  piece  means  no  waste,  for 
the  dogs  have  to  be  fed  and  the  leavings  go  to  them. 

By  seven  o'clock  every  one  is  dressed  and  ready  to  go 
about  the  day's  work.  Ovayuak  himself  was  always  the 
first  to  go  out  to  the  fishing  grounds.  Certain  members 
of  his  family  always  followed.  It  was  optional  with  visi- 
tors whether  they  helped  with  the  fishing  but  all  of  them 
did  unless  they  had  something  else  to  do.  Had  some  one 
refrained  entirely  from  work  of  all  sorts,  I  do  not  think 
our  host  would  have  done  anything  about  it,  nor  would 
the  rest  of  the  community.  But  a  lazy  man  is  despised 
by  everybody,  and  what  keeps  anybody  at  work  is  not 
the  fear  that  he  may  be  turned  out  of  the  house,  but 
rather  the  dread  of  a  public  opinion  which  would  eventu- 
ally give  him  a  low  rating  in  the  community.  Such  low 
rating  would  not  be  followed  by  any  formal  punishment, 
but  no  Eskimo  seems  to  be  able  to  bear  the  disapproval 
of  his  countrymen.  This  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  so 
few  of  the  uncivilized  Eskimos  are  lazy.  I  judge  from 
my  own  experience  that  the  stimulating  climate  is  another 
important  reason.  I  often  feel  lazy  in  southern  countries, 
but  I  find  activity  a  delight  in  the  North. 

I  used  to  go  with  Ovayuak  to  his  fishing.  We  were  on 
onr>  of  the  branches  of  the  Mackenzie  delta  and  the  river 
ice  was  at  that  time  about  three  feet  thick.  I  did  not 
understand  very  \vi  11  DOW  to  use  an  ice  chisel  and  at  first 


THE  LIFE  AT  TUKTUYAKTOK  141 

it  took  me  half  an  hour  to  make  a  fishing  hole  ten  inches 
in  diameter  through  three  feet  of  ice,  but  Ovayuak  could 
do  it  in  a  few  minutes.  For  a  rod  we  each  had  a  stick 
about  two  feet  long  and  attached  to  it  a  slender  line  of 
braided  caribou  sinew  about  four  or  five  feet  long.-  On 
the  end  of  this  was  a  little  fish  carved  out  of  ivory  about 
two  inches  in  length.  A  hole  had  been  bored  in  the  head 
of  the  fish,  a  shingle  nail  stuck  through,  bent  and  sharp- 
ened. This  sort  of  tackle  is  bait  and  hook  in  one.  When 
a  fish  bites  you  must  not  give  him  any  slack;  if  you  do 
he  will  get  off  the  hook,  for  there  is  no  barb  to  hold  him. 
There  are  only  two  tricks  in  this  fishing:  one  is  to  keep 
jiggling  the  hook  so  that  the  ivory  fish  squirms  around 
in  the  water  much  as  a  live  minnow  would;  the  other  is 
to  pull  suddenly  and  keep  pulling  when  you  have  a  bite 
until  your  catch  is  on  the  ice. 

We  were  getting  several  kinds  of  fish;  the  largest 
variety  are  called  by  the  Eskimos  sit  and  by  the  Hudson's 
Bay  traders  connic.  The  Eskimo  name  is  merely  plain 
Eskimo  but  the  white  man's  name  is  said  to  come  from 
the  French  'Tinconnu,"  which  means  "the  unknown"  fish. 
It  is  pretty  hard  to  classify.  It  used  to  be  called  "Mac- 
kenzie River  salmon"  but  now  I  believe  it  has  been  de- 
cided that  it  is  not  a  salmon  at  all.  It  is  a  scaly  fish  with 
white  flesh  and  may  attain  a  huge  size.  I  have  seen  some 
more  than  three  feet  in  length,  weighing  over  forty  pounds 
and  have  heard  that  they  sometimes  weigh  sixty  or  sev- 
enty pounds.  At  Tuktuyaktok  we  seldom  got  any  weigh- 
ing more  than  thirty  pounds,  and  fifteen-pounders  were 
perhaps  above  the  average. 

In  six  or  seven  hours  of  work  we  would  catch  on  a 
good  day  four  to  eight  fish  of  various  sorts,  or  anything 
from  ten  to  forty  pounds  per  man.    There  were  seldom 


i42        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

more  than  five  or  six  of  us  fishing,  and  counting  visitors 
we  had  on  an  average  more  than  thirty  people  to  feed 
and  about  fifty  or  sixty  dogs.  I  imagine  the  people  ate 
about  five  pounds  each  and  the  dogs  two  or  three  pounds 
each.  This  meant  that,  although  we  were  catching  fish 
pretty  rapidly,  our  store  of  them  was  getting  smaller 
each  day.  There  were  several  tons  that  had  been  ac- 
cumulated in  the  fall,  but  Ovayuak  said  he  thought  we 
would  do  well  if  we  did  not  come  to  the  end  of  it  before 
the  end  of  March.  I  applied  my  mathematical  knowledge 
to  the  case  and  assured  him  that  the  fish  would  last  longer 
than  that,  but  he  replied  that  so  they  would  if  our  family 
did  not  increase  in  size;  but  he  fully  expected  that  short- 
age of  food  would  come  upon  various  neighboring  com- 
munities presently  and  that  people  from  these  would 
gradually  gather  at  Tuktuyaktok. 

In  this  connection  Ovayuak  explained  to  me  why  he 
was  a  chief.  He  was  two  kinds  of  chief.  The  Hudson's 
Bay  people  called  him  chief  because  they  had  picked  him 
out  as  the  most  influential  man  in  the  community  with 
whom  to  deal  on  behalf  of  the  rest  of  the  Eskimos.  This 
was  purely  a  Hudson's  Bay  Company's  idea  and  Ovayuak 
said  it  had  at  first  been  incomprehensible  to  himself  and 
the  other  Eskimos.  I  knew  from  the  traders  that  they 
were  used  to  dealing  with  Indian  chiefs  all  up  the  Mac- 
kenzie valley  and,  indeed,  all  over  Canada.  Most  of 
these  Indian  chiefs  have  real  legal  power  over  their  tribes, 
the  power  having  cither  been  inherited  from  the  father 
who  was  also  a  chief  or  else  having  been  given  by  a  formal 
election  to  chieftainship.  When  the  Hudson's  Bay  men 
!  north  to  the  Eskimos  they  took  it  for  granted 
the  Eskimos  would  also  have  chiefs  and  inquired  who  the 
chief  was.     When  the  Eskimos  were  unable  to  point  to 


THE  LIFE  AT  TUKTUYAKTOK  143 

any  man  who  was  chief,  for  such  an  idea  did  not  exist 
among  them,  the  traders  watched  and  found  out  who  were 
the  most  active  and  influential  people.  They  then  decided 
for  themselves  that  these  were  the  chiefs,  and  called 
them  so. 

Ovayuak's  uncle  had  been  a  man  of  good  judgment 
and  great  energy  and  had  been  influential  in  consequence, 
for  that  is  the  Eskimo  way.  Him  the  Hudson's  Bay 
peoplex  had  picked  out  to  call  chief  and  had  made  hirn 
their  representative.  This  trust  en  the  part  of  the  Com- 
pany in  turn  increased  this  uncle's  influence,  so  that 
eventually  he  came  to  have  more  power  than  any  Eskimo 
had  had  before  him.  This  was  not  comparable  to  the 
authority  an  elected  officer  has  among  us,  but  rather 
comparable  to  the  influence  exercised  by  a  public-spirited 
and  successful  man.  When  Ovayuak's  uncle  died,  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Company  had  found  that  Ovayuak  him- 
self had  the  most  influence  and  had  concluded  that  he  had 
become  chief.  It  was  for  this  reason  that  Firth  had 
introduced  him  to  me  as  such. 

This  was  the  white  men's  aspect  of  the  chieftainship. 
So  far  as  the  Eskimos  were  concerned  Ovayuak  was  a 
man  of  influence  because  of  his  good  judgment  in  part 
but  also  because  he  had  kept  to  the  ways  of  his  fathers 
better  than  most  of  the  others.  When  the  rest  spent 
nearly  the  whole  summer  in  long  journeys  to  Fort  Mac- 
pherson  and  Herschel  Island  for  purposes  of  trading,  he 
made  only  a  quick  journey  to  Fort  Macpherson,  return- 
ing immediately  to  the  fishing  grounds.  As  I  have  men- 
tioned above,  the  best  run  of  fish  ordinarily  comes  while 
the  main  body  of  Eskimos  are  still  engaged  in  selling  their 
furs  either  to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  or  the  whalers. 
But  when  these  people  returned  to  the  fishing  grounds 


144        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

with  their  silks,  photographs,  chewing  gum  and  whatever 
else  they  had  bought  from  the  traders,  Ovayuak  would 
already  have  tons  of  fish  laid  up. 

When  the  trading  season  was  over,  all  the  Eskimos 
would  fish  energetically  each  in  the  location  which  he  had 
picked  out  that  year  (for  they  seldom  keep  the  same  lo- 
cation more  than  one  season  at  a  time).  But  with  the 
best  efforts  few  of  them  secured  even  half  as  much  as 
they  needed,  for  their  late  start  had  handicapped  them 
too  much.  Ovayuak  told  me  it  was  his  great  pride  that 
in  midwinter  or  towards  spring  when  these  people  came 
to  the  end  of  their  food  supply,  they  would  always  say 
to  each  other,  "Let  us  go  to  Ovayuak;  he  will  have  food 
if  anybody  has." 

This  was  the  main  reason  that  gave  him  influence 
among  his  ov/n  people.  It  would  never  have  occurred  to 
him  to  refuse  food  to  any  one;  in  fact,  it  seemed  to  him 
that  they  had  as  much  right  to  his  fish  as  he  had  himself, 
for  his  people  are  communists  and  that  is  the  way  they 
look  upon  things.  He  never  s^id  to  any  one,  "You  must 
take  orders  from  me  if  I  am  to  give  you  food."  Neither 
did  he  ever  issue  orders.  The  fact  was,  however,  that  if 
it  was  known  he  wanted  anything  done,  everybody  was 
eager  to  do  it  for  him.  Though  he  had  no  formal  or  le 
power,  he  had  the  respect  and  good  will  of  every  one  so 
fully  that  it  amounted  to  the  most  absolute  power. 

Ovayuak's  fishing  hole  and  mine  were  only  a  few  feet 
apart.  The  wind  naturally  changed  from  day  to  day 
and  each  morning  he  would  build  a  semi-circular  wall  of 
snow  about  five  feet  high  to  shelter  us  against  the  wind. 
Dressed  in  our  furs  we  sat  very  comfortably  and  talked. 
Really  it  was  he  who  did  most  of  the  talking,  for  I  in- 


THE  LIFE  AT  TUKTUYAKTOK  145 

sisted  that  we  must  not  speak  anything  but  Eskimo.  Of 
this  I  knew  almost  none.  He  had  the  greatest  patience  in 
first  saying  a  thing  to  me  in  plain  Eskimo  and  then  ex- 
plaining it  in  the  jargon  (of  which  I  had  secured  complete 
command  at  Herschel  Island  and  Shingle  Point).  How- 
ever, I  now  know  that  I  misunderstood  many  things  when 
he  first  explained  them,  and  doubtless  there  were  many 
things  which  I  did  not  understand  at  all. 

Adequately  dressed  and  seated  on  blocks  of  snow  in 
the  shelter  of  our  wind-breaks,  we  talked  as  comfortably 
as  if  the  weather  had  been  warm,  though  the  mercury 
in  my  thermometer  frequently  fell  to  40  °  below  zero. 
That  was  no  colder  than  what  I  was  used  to  in  Dakota 
and,  as  my  clothes  were  now  much  more  satisfactory 
than  they  had  been  in  Dakota,  I  was  more  comfortable 
than  any  one  could  conceive  who  has  tried  to  protect 
himself  against  winter  cold  merely  by  putting  on  a  heavy 
fur  overcoat  over  a  business  suit. 

We  used  to  fish  till  about  four  in  the  afternoon.  The 
people  who  were  at  home  would  have  about  noon  a  lunch 
of  frozen  fish  similar  to  our  breakfast.  This  we  fisher- 
men missed.  About  an  hour  before  the  rest  of  us  were 
ready  to  quit  work,  Ovayuak's  wife,  who  usually  fished 
with  us,  would  precede  us  home  to  start  the  cooking. 
Nearly  every  one  of  my  Eskimo  friends  had  a  watch, 
but  our  return  in  the  afternoon  depended  not  on  the  time 
as  shown  by  their  watches,  but  on  the  daylight,  and  that 
depended  on  the  cloudiness.  Also  Ovayuak  liked  to  stay 
at  his  work  as  long  as  he  felt  like  it.  When  we  got  home 
we  usually  found  that  the  meal  was  not  quite  ready,  but 
by  the  time  we  had  taken  off  our  outer  garments  and 
removed  the  hoar  frost  from  them,  we  would  have  before 


i46        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

us  huge  platters  of  steaming  boiled  fish.  This  was  my 
fifth  month  among  the  Eskimos  and  by  now  I  enjoyed 
a  meal  of  boiled  fish  as  much  as  any  Eskimo. 

After  dinner  no  formal  work  was  done  although  every- 
body was  always  busy  at  something — carving  ivory, 
cleaning  rifles,  or  even  taking  a  watch  apart  to  repair  it. 
Most  Eskimos  are  clever  with  their  hands  and  some  have 
besides  a  mechanical  turn  of  mind.  Kakotok,  for  in- 
stance, who  worked  for  Harrison,  had  some  years  before 
bought  a  watch  from  a  whaler.  When  it  stopped  one 
day  he  took  it  to  pieces  and  found  the  mainspring 
broken.  He  then  dismembered  a  cheap  alarm  clock  and 
with  a  file  and  what  other  tools  he  had,  he  made  out 
of  the  clock  mainspring  a  spring  for  his  watch  and  put 
it  in  so  the  watch  ran.  This  I  did  not  see  myself  but 
I  had  the  story  from  a  reliable  whaling  captain  and  do 
not  doubt  it.  By  the  time  I  came  among  the  Eskimos 
there  were  many  of  them  who  repaired  watches  with 
parts  taken  from  other  watches.  Doing  this  had  become 
a  pastime  and  I  am  afraid  that  they  sometimes  injured 
a  delicate  watch  by  taking  it  apart  when  it  was  not 
necessary. 

While  the  men  were  making  and  repairing  things  and 
the  women  sewing  and  doing  other  work,  some  one  would 
usually  sing  or  tell  a  story.  The  singing  might  or  might 
not  be  to  the  accompaniment  of  a  tom-tom,  which  is  their 
only  musical  instrument.  Their  stories  were  of  two 
kinds.  Some  were  well-known  folklore  tales.  Every- 
body knew  them  so  exactly  that  the  chief  interest  was 
in  watching  the  narrator  and  laughing  at  him  if  he  made 
the  slightest  mistake.  The  other  kind  of  stories  were 
the  personal  adventures  of  the  narrators.  In  that  case 
every  one  listened   carefully  without  making  comments 


THE  LIFE  AT  TUKTUYAKTOK  147 

until  the  end,  when  there  always  was   a  fusillade  of 
questions. 

They  frequently  asked  me  to  tell  about  how  condi- 
tions were  in  the  white  man's  country,  but  I  soon  found 
that  they  were  really  not  much  interested  and  that  this 
was  largely  courtesy.  At  first  I  thought  their  lack  of 
interest  might  be  due  to  my  inability  to  make  myself 
understood,  but  I  found  in  later  years  after  I  got  com- 
mand of  fluent  Eskimo  that  this  was  not  the  case.  They 
have  far  less  interest  in  the  white  man's  world  than  we 
have  in  theirs.  The  whaling  captains  told  me  that  they 
had  found  no  Eskimo  who  was  willing  to  go  with  them 
to  San  Francisco  (which  was  their  outfitting  port)  except 
for  wages.  The  idea  of  any  one  wanting  to  go  to  a  place 
for  the  sake  of  seeing  it  struck  them  as  curious.  They 
had  no  intention  of  living  in  San  Francisco  and  if  they 
did  not  want  to  live  there,  why  should  they  go  there? 
The  only  possible  motive  they  could  see  was  that  the 
whaling  captains  wanted  them  to  work  for  them,  in  which 
case  they  were  perfectly  willing  to  go  if  they  were  prom- 
ised sufficient  wages  so  that  at  the  end  of  a  year  they 
would  return  to  their  people  with  a  larger  amount  of 
goods  than  they  could  have  purchased  for  the  foxes  they 
might  have  trapped  during  the  same  year.  It  is  only 
when  an  Eskimo  community  becomes  "civilized"  that 
some  of  the  Eskimos  begin  to  want  to  go  south  to  see 
the  big  cities. 

I  used  to  try  to  explain  to  Ovayuak  that  the  climate 
of  San  Francisco  was  very  good.  (We  always  spoke  of 
San  Francisco  because  the  name  was  well  known  to  the 
Eskimos.  In  general  the  Mackenzie  Eskimos  at  that 
time  took  the  name  to  mean  the  whole  world  of  white 
men).     When  I  praised  the  southern  climate  he  asked 


148        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

me  whether  it  was  not  always  summer  there.  On  my 
replying  yes,  he  said  that  undoubtedly  white  men  might 
like  that  sort  of  climate,  but  that  an  Eskimo  could  not 
understand  that  a  country  could  be  pleasant  where  it  was 
always  summer.  He  said  that  they  do  look  forward  to 
winter  changing  into  spring  and  spring  into  summer,  but 
that  they  rejoice  still  more  when  summer  changes  into 
fall  and  winter.  After  all,  you  soon  get  tired  of  the  heat. 
In  winter,  he  said,  a  hot  house  is  good,  for  you  can 
always  go  out  and  cool  off;  but  where  can  you  flee  to 
from  the  heat  of  summer? 

Had  I  been  idle  and  with  no  interest  in  the  language 
and  customs  of  the  people,  I  might  have  found  the  life 
at  Ovayuak's  tedious.  But  everything  that  happened 
was  of  vivid  interest  and  I  continually  had  my  diary  out 
scribbling  information  about  strange  customs  and  making 
notes  of  new  words. 

Nothing  was  more  interesting  than  the  way  they  dealt 
with  the  extreme  heat  of  the  cooking  time  in  the  after- 
noon. As  I  have  said,  the  temperature  sometimes  rose 
above  ioo°.  On  coming  into  the  house,  we  took  off  all 
our  clothes  except  knee  breeches,  so  that  every  one  was 
stripped  from  the  waist  up  and  from  the  knees  down. 
The  children  up  to  the  age  of  six  or  seven  were  entirely 
naked.  One  of  the  occupations  of  the  men  was  to  sit 
for  hours  with  blocks  of  beautiful  white  spruce  drift- 
woof],  whittling  them  into  long  shavings  resembling 
excelsior.  These  shavings  were  put  into  great  piles  in 
the  corners  and  into  bags  and  boxes.  Because  of  the 
extreme  heat  there  were  streams  of  perspiration  running 
down  the  faces  and  bodies  of  most  of  the  people, 
although,  of  course,  the  Eskimos  differ  among  themselves, 
as  we  do,   in   the   freedom   with   which    they   perspire. 


THE  LIFE  AT  TUKTUYAKTOK  149 

Those  who  perspired  most  would  take  handful  after 
handful  of  excelsior,  rub  themselves  with  it  towel  fashion, 
and  then  throw  each  handful  away. 

In  some  respects  the  Eskimos  are  less  cleanly  than  we 
but  in  other  respects  more  cleanly.  Many  of  us  wipe 
frequently  with  the  same  towel;  in  later  years  when  our 
towels  became  fashionable  among  the  Eskimos  they 
learned  from  white  men  to  use  each  towel  several  times 
and  eventually  became  much  worse  than  almost  any  of 
us  in  using  filthy  towels.  But  of  their  native  excelsior 
they  never  used  a  handful  more  than  once,  throwing  it 
into  a  waste  pile  to  be  burned  eventually. 

Not  really  to  get  relief  from  the  heat,  but  rather  for 
pleasant  stimulation  (as  we  take  cold  showers  after  a 
turkish  bath)  one  or  another  of  the  perspiring  people 
would  run  out  and  stand  for  a  few  minutes  outdoors, 
naked  but  for  the  knee  breeches.  I  never  knew  of  any 
bad  results  from  this  practice — why  should  there  be,  if 
we  escape  injury  who  like  to  finish  off  a  warm  bath  with 
a  cold  shower? 

An  hour  or  two  after  the  afternoon  meal  was  over  the 
house  would  cool  down  to  the  normal  temperature  of 
75°  or  80  °,  at  which  those  are  comfortable  who  are  used 
to  it. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

LEARNING  TO  BUILD  A  SNOWHOUSE  AND  TO  BE 
COMFORTABLE  IN   ONE 

I  had  expected  to  stay  at  Tuktuyaktok  until  March  or 
April  but  now  I  began  to  think  that  it  might  be  impor- 
tant to  get  into  touch  with  my  expedition  which,  accord- 
ing to  Captain  Leavitt's  guess,  should  be  wintering  some- 
where along  the  Alaska  coast  two  or  three  hundred  miles 
west  of  Herschel  Island.  Accordingly,  when  the  time 
came  for  Ovayuak  and  his  wife  to  make  their  trip  to 
Herschel  Island  to  see  their  new  granddaughter,  I  asked 
to  be  allowed  to  go  with  them.  At  first  Ovayuak  refused, 
saying  that  the  time  immediately  after  the  sun  returns 
is  the  coldest  of  the  year  and  that  a  white  man  cannot 
stand  traveling  in  such  weather.  I  pointed  out  that  he 
intended  to  take  with  him  his  youngest  child,  a  boy  of 
three  or  four.  But  he  replied  that  if  I  were  also  a  small 
child  he  would  not  mind  taking  the  two  of  us,  for  you 
can  bundle  a  baby  up  in  furs  and  strap  him  into  a  sled, 
but  I  was  too  big  for  that.  I  asked  where  he  got  the 
idea  that  a  white  man  could  not  stand  cold,  and  he  said 
he  had  heard  about  it  indirectly  from  the  whalers.  His 
own  observation  had  been  that  those  white  men  he  had 
actually  traveled  with  were  rather  good  travelers  but 
he  supposed  they  must  be  exceptional,  for  his  cousin 
Roxy  and  others  who  had  worked  with  the  whalers  had 
been  told  by  the  white  men  themselves  how  greatly  the 
Eskimos  excel  in  their  ability  to  stand  cold. 

150 


LEARNING  TO  BUILD  A  SNOWHOUSE      151 

In  general  I  think  Ovayuak  believed  most  of  the  things 
I  told  him,  but  when  I  explained  that  the  cold  of  Dakota, 
where  I  was  brought  up,  was  about  as  intense  as  that  of 
the  Mackenzie  district,  he  could  not  reconcile  it  with 
what  he  had  always  heard  from  the  other  white  men  of 
how  warm  "San  Francisco"  was.  I  tried  to  explain  that 
the  white  man's  country  is  large,  with  all  sorts  of  climate, 
and  that  if  the  whalers  were  not  used  to  cold,  this  did 
not  apply  to  me.  Eventually  I  argued  him  into  allowing 
me  to  go  along,  but  I  know  he  looked  forward  to  a  rather 
worrisome  time. 

He  estimated  the  journey  would  take  about  ten  or 
twelve  days.  When  I  pointed  out  that  it  would  not  have 
taken  Roxy  and  me  that  long  last  fall  but  for  our  get- 
ting lost,  Ovayuak  answered  that  the  weather  was  now 
much  colder  and  that,  while  a  sled  slides  over  the  snow 
easily  at  such  temperatures  as  we  had  in  the  fall,  the 
runners  would  now  grate  on  the  sharp  snow  crystals 
almost  as  if  we  were  dragging  them  over  sand,  and  that 
we  could  not  expect  in  midwinter  to  make  much  more 
than  half  the  speed  one  could  in  the  fall  or  spring.  He 
expected  that  both  he  and  his  wife  would  have  to  pull 
in  harness  with  the  dogs  and,  while  he  did  not  expect 
me  to  do  that  unless  I  felt  like  it,  I  must  understand 
that  he  could  not  allow  me  to  ride. 

Although  I  was  a  little  worried  about  the  journey  in 
advance,  partly  from  Ovayuak's  talk  and  partly  from  the 
dreadful  stories  I  had  read  in  books  of  arctic  exploration 
about  the  hardships  of  winter  travel,  I  was  still  amused 
at  the  idea  that  I  might  have  to  ride  when  we  were 
traveling  at  a  speed  no  more  than  half  of  what  we  had 
made  in  the  fall.  Ovayuak  admitted  having  had  a  rather 
favorable  account  of  me  as  a  traveler  from  Roxy,  but  he 


152        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

thought  that  a  white  man  who  does  well  enough  in  the 
fall  might  clo  less  well  in  winter. 

We  started  from  Tuktuyaktok  February  ist  with  our 
sledge  heavily  loaded  with  fresh  fish.  The  first  night  we 
slept  at  the  settlement  of  Kangianik,  about  fifteen  miles 
to  the  southwest.  We  were  stormbound  there  for  the 
two  days  following  and  on  the  third  day  we  camped  in 
a  deserted  house,  some  twelve  or  fifteen  miles  farther  on 
our  road.  After  that  we  would  have  to  make  our  own 
camps  all  the  way  to  Shingle  Point. 

This  was  my  first  introduction  to  the  real  Eskimo  snow- 
house.  On  the  journey  east  with  Roxy  we  had  built 
vertical  circular  snow  walls  five  or  six  feet  up  and  had 
put  a  flat  canvas  roof  over.  Ovayuak  said  that  that  sort 
of  camp  was  all  right  in  the  autumn  but  now  the  weather 
was  cold  and  we  would  be  more  comfortable  in  a  dwelling 
entirely  of  snow. 

When  it  came  nearly  camp  time  both  Ovayuak  and  his 
wife  began  to  look  for  good  snow  along  the  way.  Some- 
times one  or  the  other  of  them  would  run  a  few  yards 
to  one  side  to  examine  a  drift  but  they  were  either  too 
hard  or  not  hard  enough.  Eventually  we  came  to  one 
that  was  just  right. 

A  drift  just  right  for  an  Eskimo  snowhouse  is  four 
feet  or  more  in  depth  and  of  uniform  consistency.  First 
you  determine  the  surface  hardness  by  glancing  at  your 
footprints  as  you  walk.  With  the  soft  Eskimo  footgear, 
you  should  leave  just  enough  of  an  imprint  so  that  your 
trail  could  be  followed.  Tf  your  foot  makes  no  mark 
the  snow  is  too  hard,  and  if  it  sinks  in  so  that  the  entire 
outline  of  the  foot  is  visible  in  the  snow  then  it  is  too 
soft.  Tf  the  surface  hardness  is  right,  you  next  drive 
a  rod  of  some  sort  down  through  the  snow  to  judge  the 


LEARNING  TO  BUILD  A  SNOWHOUSE      153 

consistency  of  it.  Commonly  the  Eskimos  use  a  four- 
foot  long  walking  stick,  about  as  big  around  as  a  broom 
handle.  You  drive  this  down  with  a  steady  shove,  and 
if  uniform  pressure  makes  it  go  smoothly  the  snow  is 
right.  But  if  the  stick  goes  down  easily  enough  for  a 
few  inches,  then  requires  a  much  harder  shove  to  drive 
it  down  the  next  few  inches  and  then  slips  along  easily 
for  a  few  inches  more,  your  snow  is  unsuitable  for  it  is 
stratified  and  the  cakes  you  cut  from  it  will  tend  to  break 
into  layers. 

When  the  right  snowdrift  has  been  selected  you  dig  a 
little  pit  with  a  shovel  to  get  a  good  starting  place  for 
cutting  the  blocks.  Occasionally  you  are  compelled  to 
build  on  a  drift  that  is  only  a  few  inches  deep  and  then 
you  have  to  cut  your  blocks  horizontally,  but  if  the  snow 
is  uniform  and  the  drift  deep  enough  you  prefer  to  cut 
them  vertically.  The  implement  is  a  knife  having  a  blade 
from  fourteen  to  eighteen  inches  long.  The  building 
blocks  should  be  about  domino-shaped,  say  from  twenty 
to  thirty  inches  long,  from  twelve  to  eighteen  inches 
wide.  When  you  first  cut  them  they  may  be  any  thick- 
ness from  four  inches  up,  but  if  the  block  is  too  thick 
you  trim  it  down  so  that  when  finished  it  is  only  four 
or  five  inches  in  thickness. 

In  the  case  of  the  first  snowhouse  we  built  we  had  to 
cut  the  snow  in  one  place  and  build  the  house  a  few 
yards  off  because  in  addition  to  hard  snow  you  want 
soft  snow  nearby  to  bank  the  house  with  after  it  is 
erected.  I  watched  the  building  of  this  first  house  so 
carefully  that  I  think  I  should  have  been  able  to  build 
one  similar  to  it  the  next  day.  The  procedure  is  really 
very  simple. 

Ovayuak  took  the  first  block  and  put  it  on  edge  the 


154        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

way  a  domino  would  stand  on  a  table.  With  his  hunting 
knife  he  then  undercut  the  inner  edge  slightly  so  that 
the  block  leaned  in  just  enough  so  you  could  notice  it. 
The  second  block  was  similarly  put  on  edge,  domino 
fashion,  and  in  a  position  such  that  the  circle  eventually 
made  would  be  about  ten  feet  in  diameter.  The  inner 
edge  of  this  block  was  similarly  undercut  so  that  it  leaned 
in.  This  block  also  leaned  against  the  end  of  the  first 
block  so  that  a  pressure  from  the  outside  could  not  have 
pushed  one  over  without  pushing  both  over.  In  a  similar 
manner  the  other  blocks  were  erected  until  the  first  circle 
had  been  completed. 

I  had  always  wondered  how  an  Eskimo  would  start  the 
second  tier  of  blocks  but  this  proved  very  simple. 
Ovayuak  looked  carefully  over  the  whole  circle  and 
selected  a  place  where  the  blocks  were  especially  uniform 
in  shape  and  of  obviously  good  material.  This  was  be- 
cause he  was  a  particularly  careful  builder.  I  learned 
later  that  no  such  nicety  is  essential  and  that  you  can 
start  the  second  tier  any  place.  From  a  point  three 
blocks  away  from  where  he  intended  to  begin  the  second 
tier  Ovayuak  made  a  diagonal  cut  downward  so  that  he 
removed  the  upper  quarter  of  one  block,  the  upper  half 
of  the  next,  and  about  three-quarters  of  the  third  block, 
bringing  the  cut  almost  down  to  ground  level.  He  then 
took  a  snow  block  of  ordinary  size  and  put  it  in  the  niche 
so  that  its  right-hand  end  rested  against  the  end  of  the 
whole  block  that  was  next  to  the  right.  (Had  Ovayuak 
been  left-handed  this  process  would  have  been  exactly 
reversed;  the  left-hand  end  of  the  first  block  of  the 
second  tier  would  have  been  set  against  a  block  to  the 
left  of  it.) 

Once  he  had  started  the  second  tier,  Ovayuak  built  it 


LEARNING  TO  BUILD  A  SNOWHOUSE      155 

to  the  left,  leaning  each  block  against  the  one  previ- 
ously set  up,  so  that  the  wall  rose  in  a  gradual  spiral. 
He  was  going  to  build  a  dome-shaped  house  and  the 
blocks  of  the  second  tier  were,  therefore,  leaning  in  more 
sharply  than  those  of  the  first  tier.  There  was  no  change 
in  method  as  the  house  approached  completion.  The 
higher  the  blocks  are  in  the  wall  the  more  they  lean  in; 
if  you  lean  each  carefully  against  the  one  set  up  before 
it  no  block  can  fall  unless  the  end  of  the  preceding  block 
against  which  it  leans  breaks  off.  If  the  blocks  are  set 
up  at  all  carefully  this  will  never  happen. 

Before  we  started  the  house  building,  Ovayuak  himself 
had  cut  fifteen  or  twenty  blocks.  While  he  was  building 
I  carried  these  to  him  while  his  wife  continued  cutting 
more  blocks.  I  think  it  took  altogether  between  forty 
and  fifty  blocks  to  finish  the  house.  When  she  had  cut 
what  she  thought  was  enough  the  house  was  already  three 
tiers  high.  Everywhere  between  the  blocks  there  were 
crevices,  some  narrow  and  some  wide.  She  now  started 
rubbing  soft  snow  into  these  openings,  filling  each  one. 
That  had  to  be  done  gently,  for  the  wall  is  fragile  at  first. 

When  the  house  was  three  tiers  high  it  became  difficult 
for  me  to  lift  the  blocks  high  enough  to  pass  them  to 
Ovayuak  over  the  wall.  He  then  cut  a  hole  in  the  wall 
at  ground  level  for  me  to  shove  the  blocks  in  to  him, 
he  taking  them  up  and  placing  them  in  position  along 
the  wall.  The  complete  house  required  five  tiers  of 
blocks. 

I  had  imagined  that  building  the  roof  would  be  harder 
than  the  rest.  But  when  you  watch  a  house  actually 
being  built,  you  soon  see  that  roofing  it  is  easier  than 
anything.  In  the  ground  tiers  you  are  building  in  a 
circle  so  large  that  the  two  adjoining  blocks  are  almost 


156        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

in  a  straight  line.  If  you  take  two  dominoes  and  place 
them  on  a  table  end  to  end  in  such  a  position  that  they 
are  nearly  in  a  straight  line,  then  you  will  find  it  difficult 
to  make  them  stand  by  leaning  one  against  the  other. 
But  if  you  have  the  same  two  dominoes  meet  at  an  angle 
of  from  thirty  to  forty-five  degrees  and  lean  them  against 
each  other,  they  will  stand  supporting  each  other.  The 
like  is  true  of  snow  blocks.  When  you  get  near  the  roof 
the  circle  you  are  working  on  is  less   than   half  the 


Diagram  to  illustrate  the  method  followed  in  building  a  snow-house 

diameter  of  the  original  ground  circle.  The  blocks, 
therefore,  meet  at  a  much  sharper  angle  and  you  can 
lean  them  together  more  squarely  so  they  support  each 
other  betti  r. 

When  the  house  is  all  but  completed  the  builder  finds 
in  the  center  of  the  dome  above  his  head  a  little  irregular 
open  space  where  the  blocks  do  not  quite  meet.  With 
experienced  eye  he  decides  how  to  enlarge  this  hole  so 
as  to  make  it  big  enough  for  an  average  sized  block. 
With  his  sharp  knife  he  sni  off  the  projecting  corners 
of  the  blocks,  and  now  has  above  him  an  opening  of 
regular  shape.    It  may  be  square  or  triangular  and  occa- 


LEARNING  TO  BUILD  A  SNOWHOUSE      157 

sionally  it  is  domino-shaped;  so  as  just  to  fit  the  block 
which  he  has  ready.  He  next  takes  up  a  particular  snow 
block,  trims  it  so  it  is  a  little  thinner  than  the  average, 
puts  it  on  end  and  lifts  it  vertically  up  through  the  hole, 
so  that  if  you  are  outside  you  can  see  his  two  arms  stick- 
ing up  through  holding  the  block.  He  now  allows  the 
block  to  take  a  horizontal  position  in  his  hands  and 
lowers  it  gently  down  upon  the  opening  so  as  to  cover 
it  like  a  lid.  The  block  is  somewhat  larger  than  the 
opening,  but  with  his  long  knife  he  trims  it  down  to 
exact  size  gradually,  and  then  allows  it  to  slip  into 
place. 

By  the  time  the  snow  frame  of  the  house  was  finished 
Ovayuak's  wife  had  all  the  crevices  chinked  up  as  high 
as  the  third  tier.  The  cracks  in  the  roof  Ovayuak  filled 
from  the  inside.  When  he  announced  that  they  had  all 
been  filled  his  wife  began  to  shovel  soft  snow  over  the 
house.  She  threw  shovelfuls  up  on  the  dome  but  none 
of  it  stuck  there  except  what  filled  in  the  outer  part  of 
the  crevices  that  had  been  chinked  from  the  inside. 
Sliding  down  the  sides  of  the  house  the  soft  snow  formed 
an  embankment  all  along  the  bottom  of  the  wall.  Even- 
tually when  the  shoveling  was  discontinued,  the  house 
no  longer  looked  like  a  hemisphere  or  a  dome,  but  almost 
conical.  With  the  snow  piled  at  the  bottom,  the  walls 
there  were  three  feet  thick.  Two  feet  up,  the  walls  were 
only  eight  or  ten  inches  thick,  and  the  roof  was  four 
inches — the  thickness  of  the  original  blocks. 

o 

Ovayuak  was  now  completely  shut  in,  for  he  had  filled 
up  the  little  hole  through  which  I  had  been  passing  the 
blocks  to  him.  With  a  shovel  his  wife  now  dug  a  trench 
about  three  feet  wide  down  to  the  river  ice,  four  feet 
below.     As  if  digging  a  cave  she  worked  from  the  end 


158        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

of  this  trench  in  under  the  wall  of  the  house  to  meet  a 
hole  that  Ovayuak  was  digging  down  through  the  floor 
at  that  spot.  Later  we  built  of  snow  blocks  a  porch 
over  this  trench,  making  the  regular  Eskimo  entrance. 

As  soon  as  the  trench  had  been  connected  with  the 
interior  of  the  house,  I  crawled  in  and  watched  the  rest 
of  the  process.  Scattered  all  around  him  on  the  floor 
Ovayuak  had  fragments  of  blocks  that  had  been  unsound 
and  had  broken  in  handling,  and  there  were  other  blocks 
which  for  one  reason  or  another  he  had  not  used  when  I 
passed  them  in  to  him.  Out  of  these  he  now  made  a 
platform  a  foot  high,  covering  about  two-thirds  of  the 
floor  space.  Over  this  platform  his  wife  later  spread  a 
layer  of  long-haired  caribou  skins  with  the  hair  down. 
Over  that  she  put  a  second  layer  of  skins  with  the  hair 
side  up  and  on  top  of  that  our  blankets — some  of  them 
reindeer  and  others  cotton  or  wool, 

A  snowhouse  is  best  suited  to  being  heated  with  a 
lamp,  either  the  Eskimo  lamp  or,  even  better,  a  blue 
flame  kerosene  stove  or  an  alcohol  lamp.  We  were,  how- 
ever, now  traveling  through  a  country  well  supplied  with 
driftwood  and  for  that  reason  we  carried  a  sheet-iron 
stove  instead  of  a  heating  lamp.  We  took  two  pieces 
of  wood  about  four  feet  long  each  and  placed  them  on 
the  snow  as  far  apart  as  the  length  of  the  stove.  On 
top  of  these  we  put  some  sheet  iron  and  on  top  of  it 
the  stove  itself.  A  hole  was  made  in  the  snow  roof  big 
enough  for  the  stovepipe  and  over  that  part  of  the  roof 
we  spread  a  piece  of  canvas  about  four  feet  square  that 
had  a  stove  ring  sewed  to  it  through  which  the  stovepipe 
projected. 

I  thoughtlessly  imagined  that  when  the  fire  was  lighted 
it  would  soon  thaw  a  huge  hole  in  the  wall  back  of  the 


Building  a  Snowhouse 
All   the   men   in   this   picture   are   young  Americans,   members   of 
one  of  Stefansson's  expeditions. 


Campmaking  in  Winter 


LEARNING  TO  BUILD  A  SNOWHOUSE      159 

stove  and  around  the  stovepipe.  The  stovepipe  hole  did 
increase  in  size  gradually  as  the  flames  shot  up  the  pipe 
making  it  red  to  where  it  disappeared  through  the  roof. 
There  was  a  certain  amount  of  melting  of  the  snow  wall 
back  of  the  stove  and,  indeed,  the  entire  interior  of  the 
house  melted  more  or  less.  But  as  the  snow  was  gradu- 
ally turned  into  water,  it  was  soaked  blotter-fashion  into 
the  dry  snow  outside  of  it.  In  the  roof  this  process 
continued  until  the  four-inch  blocks  had  been  thawed 
down  to  perhaps  two  inches.  By  that  time  the  roof  was 
damp  and  had  become  a  good  conductor  of  heat,  as 
compared  with  the  porous  snow.  This  gave  the  intense 
cold  outside  a  chance  to  penetrate  in  and  meet  the  heat 
from  the  interior,  stopping  the  thawing  and  turning  the 
damp  snow  blocks  into  ice.  Thus  the  thickness  of  the 
roof  is  automatically  regulated.  It  thaws  thinner  and 
thinner  until  a  balance  is  reached  between  the  outer  cold 
and  the  inner  heat.  It  is  only  in  warm  weather  that  a 
snow  roof  could  be  completely  melted  away  even  by 
maintaining  inside  the  house  a  temperature  of  70 °. 

While  we  were  cooking  supper  the  snowhouse  was 
almost  as  hot  as  our  earth  and  wood  house  at  Tuktuyak- 
tok.  Ovayuak  told  me,  and  I  later  verified  it,  that  had 
there  been  no  stovepipe  hole  the  snow  house  would  have 
remained  at  an  agreeable  temperature  all  night.  As  it 
was,  however,  when  the  fire  went  out  a  certain  amount  of 
warm  air  continued  to  go  up  through  the  stovepipe.  This 
allowed  a  corresponding  quantity  of  colder  air  to  enter 
through  the  open  door.  The  result  was  that  by  morning 
it  was  freezing  fairly  hard  inside  the  house.  Our  bedding 
was  warm,  however,  and  I  did  not  mind  it.  In  the 
morning  when  we  lighted  the  fire  the  house  became  fairly 
warm  in  a  few  minutes  and,  of  course,  remained  so  until 


160        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

we  let  the  fire  go  out  preparatory  to  packing  up  the  stove 
and  the  rest  of  our  gear  to  continue  the  journey. 

During  the  evening  I  had  asked  Ovayuak  whether 
there  was  no  danger  of  the  house  caving  in  on  us  during 
the  night  and  he  had  laughed  at  me.  When  we  were 
about  to  start,  this  conversation  apparently  recurred  to 
him,  so  he  asked  me  if  I  would  like  to  try  how  fragile 
the  house  was  by  climbing  on  top  of  it.  I  hesitated  a 
moment,  and  he  ran  up  on  the  roof  himself  and  stood 
on  the  peak.  I  then  clambered  up  after  him.  Had  there 
been  ten  of  us  our  combined  weight  would  not  have 
broken  the  house  down.  \  The  structure  had  been  very 
fragile  in  the  evening  just 'while  we  were  putting  it  up, 
but  after  it  had  once  been  dampened  by  the  overheating 
of  the  interior  and  had  then  been  turned  partially  to  ice, 
nothing  but  a  sharp  blow  could  have  broken  it. )  To  begin 
with,  the  half-solidified  blocks  of  snow  were  now  much 
stronger  than  they  had  been;  for  another  thing,  the  shape 
of  the  house  was  just  right  to  sustain  a  heavy  weight. 
The  case  of  an  egg  is  analogous.  You  can  easily  break 
an  egg  with  a  sharp  blow,  but  it  is  not  so  easy  to  crush 
a  raw  egg  by  squeezing  it  in  the  hand  if  the  pressure 
is  applied  uniformly. 

As  we  traveled  west,  the  skies  were  clear  every  day 
and  the  cold  gradually  increased.  I  did  not  have  a 
thermometer  with  me  but  I  should  judge  it  was  fre- 
quently 35°  and  even  40 °  below  zero:  possibly  it  may 
have  been  45  °  below.  This  was  no  colder  than  what  I 
had  been  used  to  in  Dakota.  It  surprised  Ovayuak  to 
see  how  naturally  I  took  to  the  conditions  and  he  began 
to  believe  me  when  I  told  him  that  certain  parts  of  the 
white  man's  country  were  as  cold  in  winter  as  his. 

On   the   twelfth   day   of   our   journey  we  arrived   at 


LEARNING  TO  BUILD  A  SNOWHOUSE      161 

Shingle  Point  and  found  everything  well  there,  both  in 
Sten's  house  and  in  Roxy's.  They  had  had  during  the 
winter  numerous  visitors  with  dogs  and,  for  one  reason 
and  another,  their  store  of  fish  had  almost  given  out. 
As  there  is  no  winter  fishing  at  Shingle  Point  and  no 
sealing  nearer  than  twenty  miles  from  there,  Roxy's 
household  had  decided  on  breaking  up.  When  Ovayuak 
returned  from  Herschel  Island  Roxy  and  his  family 
would  accompany  him  back  to  Tuktuyaktok,  while 
Oblutok's  family  would  go  up  into  the  forest  region  of 
the  Mackenzie  delta  where  the  spring  fishing  is  tolerable 
and  where  there  are  rabbits  and  ptarmigan. 

I  had  now  been  living  for  the  last  six  weeks  on  fish 
(without  salt)  and  water — no  sugar,  no  flour,  no  vege- 
tables, nothing  whatever  but  fish  and  water — and  before 
that  for  three  months  on  about  95%  either  fish  and 
water  or  meat  and  water.  I  had  just  passed  through 
the  supposedly  depressing  midwinter  period  called  "The 
Long  Arctic  Night"  and  had  just  finished  my  first  jour- 
ney under  the  rigors  of  a  polar  winter.  Apropos  of  all 
of  it,  Sten  remarked  I  must  have  been  putting  on  weight. 
I  weighed  myself — 176  pounds.  That  was  ten  pounds 
more  than  I  ever  had  weighed  up  to  that  time,  and  is 
twenty  pounds  more  than  I  normally  weigh  when  living 
in  a  city. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

TRAVELS  AFTER  THE  SUN  CAME  BACK 

Although  Sten  had  been  whaling  in  the  Arctic  for 
something  like  fifteen  years,  he  had  always  lived  on 
ships  in  winter  or  in  their  vicinity  and  had  never  been 
short  of  groceries.  The  supplies  I  had  secured  for  him 
in  the  fall  by  the  boat  trip  to  Herschel  Island  had  nearly 
given  out,  so  he  asked  me  to  take  his  dog  team  and  fetch 
a  load  of  groceries  which  he  thought  Captain  Leavitt 
would  sell  him.  The  reason  why  he  could  not  go  him- 
self was  that  he  had  been  troubled  the  last  year  with 
epilepsy  and  did  not  dare  to  take  chances  on  traveling. 
I  was  willing  to  make  the  trip  but  preferred  to  do  so  two 
or  three  weeks  later.  Accordingly,  I  remained  behind  at 
Shingle  Point  while  Ovayuak's  party  continued  west. 

There  was  now  staying  with  Roxy's  family  an  Eskimo 
named  Kanirk,  a  name  that  may  be  translated  into  Eng- 
lish as  "Hilltop."  The  whalers,  who  had  no  idea  of  the 
meaning  of  the  word,  had  apparently  found  in  the  sound 
of  it  a  suggestion  of  a  well-known  English  word  and  had 
called  him  "Cockney."  When  first  I  heard  it  I  took  it 
to  be  a  nickname  but  Captain  Leavitt  told  me  later  that 
it  was  merely  a  careless  pronunciation  of  what  the 
whalers  believed  to  be  his  real  name. 

Apart  from  men  who  are  students  of  languages,  it  is 
the  general  habit  of  those  whites  who  come  in  contact 
with  Eskimos  or  Indians  to  pronounce  any  words  they 
hear,  and  especially  the  names  of  people  and  places,  so 

162 


TRAVELS  AFTER  THE  SUN  CAME  BACK    163 

as  to  resemble  more  or  less  closely  some  word  of  the 
white  man's  language.  For  this  reason  it  is  certain  that 
were  three  traveling  parties  to  pass  through  any  given 
aboriginal  region,  one  party  English,  another  French, 
and  the  third  Swedish,  the  three  parties  would  bring  back 
very  different  versions  of  the  names  of  persons  and 
places.  This  shows  how  unlikely  it  is  that  the  Indian 
names  that  we  use  in  America  to  designate  our  rivers, 
mountains  and  cities  are  even  approximately  similar  to 
the  real  Indian  pronunciation  of  those  names. 

When  I  first  dealt  with  the  Eskimos  their  names 
sounded  very  different  to  me  from  what  they  now  do. 
The  man  whom  I  call  Ovayuak  was  introduced  to  me  by 
the  Hudson's  Bay  people  as  "Levayuk,"  which  some  of 
the  white  men  had  shortened  into  "Levi."  At  first  the 
name  sounded  to  me  a  little  like  "Levayuk"  and  I  used  it 
until  he  himself  took  me  in  hand  to  instruct  me.  It  was 
only  after  continuous  listening  to  his  slow  repetitions  that 
I  began  to  hear  it  clearly  as  O-va-yu-ak.  Another  good 
example  was  an  Eskimo  woman  Ikkayuak  (Ik-ka-yu-ak), 
whom  the  white  men  called  "Kashia"  saying  it  was  her 
native  name.  The  next  sandspit  east  of  Shingle  Point  is 
called  by  the  natives  Akpaviatsiak  (Ak-pa-vi-at-si-ak) 
which  means  "the  little  race  course."  The  white  men 
have  turned  this  into  "Appawuchi,"  which  resembles  the 
real  name  only  faintly  and  which  means  nothing. 

It  was  agreed  that  when  I  went  to  Herschel  Island  to  do 
the  trading  for  Sten,  Kanirk  and  Roxy's  boy  would  go 
with  me,  taking  his  team  with  the  idea  of  possibly  buying 
certain  things  for  him.  We  started  west  along  the  coast 
February  15th.  Nothing  special  happened  the  first  day. 
The  ice  offshore  had  been  crushed  up  into  huge  ridges 
by  the  wind  and  we  could  not  travel  over  it  but  had  to 


1 64        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

follow  the  narrow  beach  between  cliffs  two  or  three  hun- 
dred feet  high  on  one  side  and  the  impassable  ice  on  the 
other.  There  was  soft  snow  under  the  cliff  in  places 
where  there  was  a  lee,  and  here  and  there  the  rough  ice 
had  been  shoved  actually  up  against  the  cliff  in  such  a 
way  that  we  had  great  difficulty  in  scrambling  over.  Oc- 
casionally we  had  to  use  axes  to  hack  away  snags  of  ice 
to  make  a  road  for  the  sleds. 

We  spent  the  first  night  in  Amundsen's  abandoned 
house  at  King  Point.  The  next  morning  there  was  a  howl- 
ing blizzard  and  it  continued  for  three  days.  By  that 
time  we  had  eaten  up  all  the  food  we  had  with  us,  for 
we  had  expected  to  reach  Herschel  Island  in  three  travel- 
ing days.  It  was  still  blowing  rather  hard  on  the  fourth 
morning  but  we  had  to  do  one  of  two  things — turn  and 
travel  before  the  wind  back  to  Shingle  Point  and  get  a 
fresh  start,  or  face  the  wind  and  travel  some  twenty  miles 
against  it  to  Stokes  Point  where  we  knew  a  family  of 
Eskimos  were  living  about  ten  or  twelve  miles  our  side 
of  Her?chel  Island.  My  companions  were  inclined  to 
turn  back,  but  I  had  a  little  pride  in  such  things  and 
urged  that  we  should  go  on.  Accordingly,  we  set  out  and 
I  had  my  first  arctic  experience  with  a  blizzard  in  the 
open. 

In  Dakota  I  had  seen  many  blizzards  (and  some  of 
them  are  as  bad  as  any  in  the  polar  regions)  but  there 
had  been  no  occasion  to  tra  linst  them  any  length 

of  time,  for  houses  or  other  shelters  had  always  been  avail- 
able. Dressed  as  we  were  in  Dakota,  we  should  have 
fro/en  to  death  anyway  trying  to  walk  twenty  miles  into 
a  storm.  Dressed  in  El  I  imo  clothes  it  is  another  matter. 
Hut  although  our  lives  were  in  no  danger,  we  had  diffi- 
culties of  two  kinds. 


TRAVELS  AFTER  THE  SUN  CAME  BACK    165 

One  difficulty  was  with  the  dogs.  Their  eyes  kept  get- 
ting filled  with  the  drifting  snow  and  caking  with  the 
freezing  slush  that  resulted  when  the  snow  melted  in  their 
eyes.  When  a  dog  can  see  no  longer  he  refuses  to  travel 
and  commonly  wants  to  curl  up  and  sleep.  We  had  to 
clean  their  eyes  every  few  minutes  to  keep  them  going. 

The  other  trouble  was  with  my  beard.  One  of  my 
southern  ideas  was  that  a  beard  would  be  some  protection 
against  freezing  the  face.  The  Eskimos  had  told  me  that 
this  was  the  opposite  of  the  truth,  and  it  was  partly 
thoughtlessness  that  I  did  not  take  their  advice  and  shave 
clean  for  this  journey.  As  it  was,  I  had  a  full  beard. 
Had  the  weather  been  a  little  colder  the  condition  might 
not  have  been  quite  so  bad.  I  think  the  temperature  was 
about  io°  below  zero  and  the  wind  perhaps  forty  miles 
an  hour  directly  against  us.  The  snow  that  struck  my 
face  melted  in  part  and  the  water  ran  down  my  cheeks, 
freezing  in  the  beard.  This  helped  to  cake  the  snow  into 
the  beard.  I  tried  at  first  to  keep  my  face  clear  by  taking 
off  my  mittens  and  melting  some  of  the  ice  off  with  my 
hands  but  I  soon  concluded  that  if  I  continued  this  my 
hands  would  freeze.  Hands  are  worth  a  great  deal  more 
than  faces,  especially  in  the  North,  and  so  I  kept  them 
warm  in  my  mittens,  allowing  my  face  to  freeze.  At  first 
I  kept  both  eyes  open  by  clearing  them  occasionally  with 
one  of  my  hands  but  even  this  seemed  a  little  risky,  so 
I  closed  one  eye  and  allowed  the  ice  to  form  over  it. 

After  some  seven  or  eight  hours  of  travel  we  got  to 
Stokes  Point.  Instead  of  being  cold  I  was  too  warm,  if 
anything.  But  on  my  face  there  was  a  mask  of  ice  which 
I  suppose  must  have  weighed  more  than  ten  pounds. 
When  I  went  into  the  overheated  Eskimo  house,  the 
warmth  of  my  face  combined  with  the  warmth  of  the 


166        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

room  soon  brought  the  mask  off  in  one  piece.  Under  it 
my  face  had  been  slightly  frozen  all  the  way  from  the 
roots  of  my  hair  down  to  my  neck,  even  including  the 
eyelid  of  the  eye  that  had  been  kept  closed.  The  freezing 
was  only  skin-deep  and  no  worse  than  a  sunburn,  except 
on  the  chin  where  it  had  gone  almost  to  the  bone.  I  had 
a  sore  there  for  two  or  three  weeks  and  the  scar  did  not 
disappear  for  a  few  months.  The  lesson  was  well  worth 
it,  however,  for  I  have  never  since  worn  a  beard  in  cold 
weather,  nor  have  I  since  had  my  face  seriously  frozen. 

The  whole  matter  of  keeping  your  face  from  freezing 
is  to  keep  your  hands  warm  so  that  you  can  use  them  for 
thawing  purposes  if  your  face  begins  to  freeze.  If  you 
are  traveling  against  a  head  wind  with  a  temperature 
anything  like  30  °  or  40  °  below  zero,  more  or  less  freezing 
of  the  face  is  sure  to  take  place.  You  keep  making 
grimaces,  for  freezing  is  painless  and  you  can  detect  it 
only  by  a  stiffening  of  your  chin  or  cheek.  Occasionally 
you  take  one  hand  furtively  out  of  the  mitten  and  feel 
over  the  face  to  see  if  any  part  is  getting  stiff.  If  you 
find  a  little  stiffening  in  the  skin  of  the  cheek  or  the  chin 
you  hold  the  warm  hand  on  it  for  a  moment  until  it  is 
gone. 

If  the  weather  is  exceedingly  bad — say  50  °  below  zero 
with  a  moderately  strong  wind — a  different  method  is 
used.  The  cut  of  both  your  outer  and  inner  caribou  skin 
coats  is  such  that  if  you  want  to  you  can  withdraw  your 
arm  from  the  sleeve  and  hold  it  on  your  bare  breast  inside 
of  the  clothing,  tucking  the  empty  sleeve  into  your  belt  to 
prevent  the  cold  getting  in  that  way.  The  neck  of  both 
coats  is  made  loose  and  you  can  shove  your  warm  hand 
up  through.  If  any  part  IS  getting  stiff  you  hold  your 
hand  over  it  as  long  as  may  be  necessary  to  thaw  it 


TRAVELS  AFTER  THE  SUN  CAME  BACK    167 

out.  Then  you  pull  it  in  and  hold  it  against  your  breast 
where  it  gets  warm  in  a  moment. 

By  being  careful  you  can  see  to  it  that  the  freezing  is 
never  more  than  skin-deep.  A  little  peeling  of  the  skin 
takes  place  a  few  days  later  and  there  may  be  a  moderate 
burning  sensation  for  a  few  hours  in  the  evening  after  a 
day  when  you  have  frozen  frequently.  These  are  minor 
discomforts  and,  as  I  have  said,  are  no  more  serious  than 
sunburn  when  you  become  equally  used  to  them. 

When  we  crossed  over  to  the  Herschel  Island  harbor 
the  day  after  my  freezing  experience,  we  found  not  only 
a  welcome  at  the  police  barracks  and  at  Captain  Leavitt's 
ship  but  also  news  of  our  expedition.  Leffingwell  and 
the  Mate  of  the  Duchess,  Storkerson,  had  been  to  Her- 
schel Island  in  the  fall  and  had  reported  that  the  Duchess 
was  wintering  safe  behind  Flaxman  Island  just  as  Cap- 
tain Leavitt  had  guessed.  Leffingwell  had  left  word  for 
me  that  I  might  stay  in  the  delta  if  I  wanted  to  or  come 
to  Flaxman  Island  if  I  preferred.  I  decided  to  spend 
some  more  time  to  the  east  and  proceed  to  Flaxman  Isl- 
and in  April. 

My  return  journey  to  Shingle  Point  was  an  interesting 
experience.  The  weather  was  good  the  first  day  and  we 
made  Stokes  Point.  The  next  day  we  were  going  to  make 
the  Amundsen  cabin  at  King  Point.  We  had  scarcely 
more  than  started  out  when  it  began  to  breeze  up  from 
the  east  and  to  snow.  The  wind  gradually  increased  until 
when  we  rounded  Kay  Point  it  was  blowing  a  gale  in  our 
faces.  We  now  had  the  usual  trouble  with  the  dogs  in 
keeping  their  eyes  free  of  snow.  Finally  the  storm  got 
so  bad  that  their  eyes  filled  as  fast  as  we  could  clear 
them,  and  they  kept  curling  up  with  their  noses  in  their 
tails  in  spite  of  anything  we  could  do.    We  had  one  whip 


168        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

with  us,  for  the  dog-whipping  habit  had  come  in  from  the 
Indians  to  the  south  enough  so  that  some  Eskimos  now 
owned  whips  although  few  used  them.  Kanirk  and  the 
boy  were  ahead  with  Roxy's  team  and  I  followed  with 
Sten's.  Finally  the  dogs  became  so  nearly  unmanage- 
able that  Kanirk  took  hold  of  their  leading  dog,  dragging 
the  team  ahead  and  bothering  no  more  with  their  eyes. 
The  going  along  the  beach  was  so  rough  that  the  sleds 
were  upsetting  continually.  The  boy  tended  the  forward 
sled  in  this  respect  and  I  managed  the  rear  one. 

We  struggled  along  this  way  until  my  sled  got  a  bad 
upset,  or  rather  fell  off  a  ledge  into  a  low,  soft  place.  I 
shouted  to  the  men  ahead  but,  of  course,  they  could  not 
hear  me  against  the  wind  and  they  disappeared  in  a 
moment  into  the  swirling  snow.  Eventually  I  got  my 
sled  righted  but  long  before  that  my  dogs  had  all  been 
curled  up  snugly  and  now  the  drifting  snow  had  nearly 
covered  them  from  sight.  I  got  hold  of  the  leading  dog 
and  jerked  on  the  harness  until  I  had  the  team  on  their 
feet.  While  the  other  sled  had  been  just  in  front  of  us 
they  had  struggled  ahead  bravely,  but  now  when  nothing 
was  in  sight  the  story  was  different.  I  got  them  started 
but  neither  they  nor  I  could  see  the  trail  of  the  other 
sled  which  had  been  completely  covered  up  by  the  drift, 
and  I  could  not  see  ahead  enough  to  guide  them.  I  now 
tried  to  walk  ahead,  dragging  the  leading  dog,  but  then 
the  sled  upset  right  away.  At  first  I  felt  sure  the  Eski- 
mos would  come  back  to  help  me  and  I  struggled  on  for 
perhaps  an  hour  during  which  time  I  do  not  think  I  made 
more  than  one  or  two  hundred  yards  between  the  up- 
settings  of  the  sled  and  the  refusal  of  the  dogs  to  work 
because  of  being  blinded  by  the  snow. 

When  I  realized  the  Eskimos  were  not  coming  back  I 


TRAVELS  AFTER  THE  SUN  CAME  BACK    169 

realized  also  that  the  situation  was  of  a  sort  which  ac- 
cording to  all  the  books  I  had  read  should  lead  to  tragedy. 
The  Eskimo  sled  had  been  light,  for  they  had  bought 
very  few  things  from  the  ship.  But  mine  was  heavy,  for 
Captain  Leavitt  had  sold  me  all  the  flour  and  ether  things 
that  Sten  wanted.  My  sled  being  heavy  with  groceries, 
the  Eskimos  had  put  on  theirs  all  the  camp  gear  and  bed 
clothing  and  all  the  equipment.  During  the  early  part 
of  the  day  a  frying  pan  had  fallen  off  their  sled.  I  had 
picked  it  up  and  stuck  it  on  mine,  and  this  was  the  only 
implement  I  now  had. 

I  remembered  that  somewhere  in  this  vicinity  on  the 
way  west  we  had  seen  a  deserted  Eskimo  snowhouse. 
When  I  could  not  get  the  dogs  to  move  ahead  farther,  I 
left  them  and  taking  the  frying  pan  with  me  I  plodded 
into  the  wind  searching  for  the  snowhouse.  It  turned 
out  to  be  only  a  few  hundred  yards  away. 

It  was  an  old  house  built  in  the  early  fall  and  repeated 
blizzards  had  cut  away  at  the  roof  until  a  hole  had  been 
made  by  the  wind.  Through  this  hole  the  house  had 
been  packed  full  of  snow.  I  did  not  have  even  a  hunting 
knife  big  enough  to  use  for  a  snow  knife,  so  there  was  no 
use  trying  to  make  a  new  house.  Furthermore,  I  had 
never  tried  to  build  one  although  I  had  seen  Ovayuak 
build  several.  The  only  thing  to  do,  then,  was  to  try  to 
dig  out  the  soft  snow  from  the  interior  of  the  house  with 
my  frying  pan  shovel.  About  two  hours  of  work  enabled 
me  to  do  this  sufficiently.  I  then  went  back  to  the  sled 
and  took  a  small  piece  of  canvas  that  was  on  it,  unhitched 
the  dogs  and  led  them  to  my  proposed  camp.  While  I 
was  doing  this  a  good  deal  of  fresh  snow  had  drifted  in  so 
that  I  had  to  do  some  more  shoveling  with  the  frying  pan. 
I  then  dropped  two  of  the  dogs  into  the  house  with  the 


1 7o        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

idea  of  their  furnishing  me  with  some  warmth,  followed 
them  in  and  tried  to  cover  the  hole  over  with  the  piece 
of  canvas.  I  succeeded  in  this  only  partially  and  during 
the  following  night  a  good  deal  of  snow  kept  sifting  in. 

I  was  pretty  tired  by  the  struggle  of  the  day  and  it 
was  not  long  from  the  time  the  dogs  and  I  got  into  the 
house  until  I  went  to  sleep  with  one  of  them  for  a  pillow. 
I  slept  well  until  morning  when  I  began  to  notice  that  I 
was  getting  wet.  My  clothes  had  been  pretty  well  filled 
with  snow  and  then  the  house  was  overheated  by  myself 
and  the  dogs,  so  that  I  was  everywhere  damp  and  on 
parts  of  my  body  soaking  wet.  I  feared  this  might  be 
serious,  for  the  clothes  would  become  stiff  as  soon  as  I 
went  into  the  outdoors  cold.  But  there  was  nothing  to  do 
but  to  try  it  as  soon  as  it  was  daylight. 

Shortly  after  the  first  glimmering  began  to  show  through 
the  translucent  snow  roof  I  went  out,  hitched  the  dogs  to 
the  sled  as  quickly  as  possible,  and  started  off.  There 
was  no  trouble  now  for  the  weather  was  beautiful — clear 
skies  and  hard  frost.  About  four  miles  of  driving  brought 
me  in  view  of  the  Amundsen  camp  at  King  Point  and  I 
saw  the  other  sled  hitched  up  and  the  men  ready  to  start. 
When  they  saw  me  coming  they  waited  and  started  a  fire 
to  cook  my  breakfast. 

I  learned  later  from  the  boy  that  they  had  gone  ahead 
probably  half  a  mile  or  so  the  previous  evening  before 
noticing  that  I  was  not  following.  The  boy  had  then 
wanted  to  stop  and  go  back  for  me  but  Kanirk  had  said 
I  would  doubtless  conn  along.  When  they  got  to  the 
cabin  and  cooked  supper  without  my  coming,  the  boy 
had  again  proposed  that  they  go  to  look  for  me  but  this 
Kanirk  had  simply  refused  to  do.  The  next  morning  the 
boy  had  wanted  to  go  back  and  look  for  me  but  Kanirk 


s--. -•«■"•> 


■ 


\ 


"..» 


M 


"•'' 


Sea  Ice  Piled  Against  the  Coast  in  Winter 


**Jf_ 


M 


Breaking  Camp 


TRAVELS  AFTER  THE  SUN  CAME  BACK    171 

had  wanted  to  keep  on  for  Shingle  Point  and  they  were 
standing  arguing  about  this  when  I  came  in  sight. 

I  have  never  rightly  understood  Kanirk's  position  in 
this.  He  already  had  a  bad  reputation  (as  I  learned 
later)  by  reason  of  having  abandoned  on  a  journey  a  sick 
Eskimo  companion  who  would  have  frozen  to  death  had 
he  not  been  picked  up  by  others  who  followed.  His  own 
statement  was  that  he  had  considered  it  no  use  looking 
for  me  in  the  morning  for  I  would  undoubtedly  have 
frozen  to  death  during  the  night.  White  men  usually  did 
freeze  to  death  when  they  were  lost  over  night. 

The  idea  which  the  Mackenzie  River  Eskimos  had  at 
the  time  about  the  ease  with  which  white  men  freeze  to 
death  had  no  doubt  grown  up  from  the  frequent  tragedies 
that  occurred  to  sailors  who  tried  to  run  away  from  the 
whaling  ships.  Captain  Leavitt  told  me  many  such 
stories.  Men  brought  up  in  cities  and  sailors  who  knew 
nothing  about  land  travel  had  frequently  tried  to  run 
away  from  Herschel  Island  to  the  interior  of  Alaska,  espe- 
cially during  the  time  of  the  Yukon  gold  excitement  (be- 
tween 1899  and  1902).  Commonly  these  men  had  little 
idea  of  which  way  to  travel  or  of  the  distance  they  would 
have  to  go  and  no  idea  of  how  to  take  care  of  themselves. 
It  seems  unbelievable  but  some  froze  to  death  under  clear 
skies  at  distances  of  no  more  than  six  or  eight  miles  from 
the  ship.  They  had  sneaked  away  from  the  vessels  per- 
haps about  nine  or  ten  o'clock  in  the  evening,  had  stum- 
bled along  through  half-darkness  over  rough  ice  on  the 
way  towards  the  mainland  for  six  or  eight  miles,  had  be- 
come tired  and  with  clothing  wet  with  perspiration  had 
Iain  down  to  sleep,  never  to  waken. 

Among  white  men  in  the  North,  such  as  Hudson's  Bay 
Company's  men  and  whalers,  there  is  prevalent  a  super- 


172        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

stitious  fear  of  going  to  sleep  outdoors  in  cold  weather. 
It  is  not  the  sleeping,  however,  that  is  dangerous  to  a 
tired  man  but  rather  that  he  does  not  go  to  sleep  soon 
enough.  If  you  exert  yourself  onty  moderately  you  will 
not  perspire,  and  so  long  as  you  do  not  perspire  your 
clothes  will  keep  reasonably  dry,  at  least  for  the  first 
day  or  two  after  you  start  on  a  journey.  The  Eskimos 
know  how  to  keep  their  clothes  dry  indefinitely  but 
the  runaway  whalers  did  not  know  how  to  do  that.  This 
was  not  the  trouble,  however,  but  rather  that  they  worked 
themselves  into  a  sweat,  struggled  along  until  they  were 
soaking  wet  and  dead  tired,  and  then  finally  went  into  a 
sleep  that  ended  in  death. 

My  own  practice  through  many  years  has  been  to  lie 
down  in  the  open  and  go  to  sleep  whenever  I  feel  like  it. 
I  have  frequently  done  this  on  winter  nights  under  the 
stars,  with  a  temperature  in  the  vicinity  of  50 °  and  55 ° 
below  zero,  or  as  cold  as  it  ever  gets  in  the  arctic  regions. 
I  find  that  in  fifteen  or  twenty  minutes  the  cold  wakes 
me  up.  That  is  not  much  of  a  nap,  but  when  I  get  up 
from  it  I  feel  a  good  deal  refreshed  and  go  on  until  I  get 
too  sleepy  again,  when  I  take  a  second  nap.  The  fear  of 
going  to  sleep  in  extreme  cold  is  not  only  unfounded  but 
is  actually  the  cause  of  many  deaths  in  the  polar  regions. 
Men  struggle  ahead  and  keep  awake  as  long  as  they  can. 
Finally  exhaustion  compels  them  to  sleep.  It  is  then 
they  are  in  danger  of  freezing  and  never  waking. 

The  Eskimo  sled  had  contained  besides  our  food  and 
camping  gear  a  bag  <>f  my  clothing.  In  the  warmth  of  the 
Amundsen  cabin  I  changed  after  breakfast  into  dry 
clothes.  We  reached  Shingle  Point  easily  by  mid-after- 
noon. 


CHAPTER  XV 

WE  GO  IN   SEARCH   OF   OUR   OWN  EXPEDITION 

Although  it  still  looked  like  winter,  I  considered  spring 
to  begin  April  7th  when  I  started  to  follow  the  coast  west- 
ward in  search  of  Flaxman  Island  which  I  had  never 
seen  and  my  own  expedition  v/hich  so  far  had  been  mine  in 
name  only. 

My  companion  on  this  trip  was  an  Eskimo  from  Cape 
York  on  Bering  Straits  who  had  been  with  the  whalers 
so  long  that  everybody  seemed  to  have  forgotten  his 
rightful  name.  Even  the  Eskimos  called  him  "Cape 
York"  and  he  introduced  himself  to  me  by  that  name. 

Cape  York  had  never  been  farther  west  in  winter  than 
about  halfway  to  Flaxman  Island,  but  he  had  often  seen 
the  place  from  shipboard  as  he  passed  by  in  summertime 
aboard  one  or  another  of  the  whaling  vessels  and  he 
thought  he  would  be  able  to  recognize  the  vicinity  when 
we  came  to  it.  One  might  think  that  finding  a  ship  an- 
chored behind  an  island  would  not  be  particularly  dif- 
ficult, and  neither  would  it  be  in  good  weather.  But  in 
the  Arctic  the  weather  gets  more  disagreeable  and  more 
difficult  to  deal  with  when  spring  approaches. 

In  mid-winter  it  is  cold  in  the  Arctic  but  when  you  are 
dressed  Eskimo-style  you  don't  mind  it.  Fifty  or  fifty- 
five  below  zero  is  a  little  too  cold,  for  if  you  run  or  exert 
yourself  violently  and  take  the  air  rapidly  into  your  lungs 
in  consequence,  it  has  a  sort  of  burning  and  half-stifling 
effect.     Forty  below  is  about  right  and  on  the  north  coast 

173 


i74        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

of  Canada  it  is  not  likely  to  be  colder  than  that  more 
than  ten  or  twenty  days  in  any  one  winter. 

It  is  only  in  the  interior  of  a  continent  or  large  island 
a  hundred  miles  or  more  from  the  coast  that  you  may 
occasionally  get  a  temperature  of  sixty  below  zero.  Your 
first  morning  of  that  kind  of  weather  is  a  marvelous  ex- 
perience. The  air  is  so  clear  that  you  can  see  three  or 
four  times  as  far  as  you  can  in  any  lowland  in  the  South 
(mountain  air  is  clear  in  all  parts  of  the  world).  You 
can  see  with  the  bare  eyes  almost  as  well  at  50  °  below 
as  you  can  with  opera  glasses  at  50  °  above.  But  if  your 
eyesight  is  improved  two  or  three  times  over,  your  hear- 
ing becomes  ten  times  keener.  I  have  heard  distinctly  at 
a  mile  the  footfall  of  caribou  walking  quietly  through 
slightly  crusted  snow.  Firth  told  me  that  in  the  moun- 
tains west  of  Fort  Macpherson  he  had  frequently  heard 
Indians  chopping  their  firewood  in  camps  that  were  ten 
miles  away. 

From  Christmas  until  April  the  arctic  skies  are  clear 
most  of  the  time  and  you  have  such  experiences  as  I  have 
just  described.  But  when  the  temperature  begins  to  rise 
towards  zero  Fahrenheit,  the  skies  begin  to  cloud  over, 
fogs  are  frequent,  the  snow  storms  are  twice  as  numerous 
and  the  snowfall  heavier  than  in  the  next  worst  period, 
which  is  the  late  fall. 

When  Cape  York  and  I  started  west  we  still  had  clear 
weather,  but  Captain  Leavitt  warned  me  that  it  was  un- 
likely to  continue  that  w;  y  and  that  we  might  miss  Flax- 
man  Island  and  the  ship  unless  we  were  careful.  Fear- 
ing this  difficulty,  he  gave  me  as  good  a  description  of  the 
topography  as  he  could,  but  unfortunately  he  had  seen  it 
only  from  shipboard  in  summer.  The  land  then  has  an 
appearance  quite  different  from  that  of  winter,  and  the 


IN  SEARCH  OF  OUR  OWN  EXPEDITION     175 

point  of  view  of  a  traveler  by  sled  is  necessarily  different 
from  that  of  a  whaling  captain,  for  the  sled  traveler's  eyes 
are  less  than  six  feet  above  sea  level  as  he  follows  the 
beach,  but  the  captain  gets  almost  a  bird's-eye  view  from 
his  masthead,  more  than  a  hundred  feet  above  water. 

However,  Captain  Leavitt  thought  we  could  not  miss 
Barter  Island,  for  that  is  the  first  land  west  of  Herschel 
Island  higher  than  fifteen  or  twenty  feet  above  sea  level. 
Herschel  Island  is  about  five  hundred  feet  high  and  Barter 
Island,  Captain  Leavitt  thought,  would  be  about  a  third 
as  high,  consisting  of  rolling  hills  where  the  rest  of  the 
coast  is  flat.  On  a  clear  day  we  could  judge  roughly  also 
by  the  distance  of  the  mountains  from  the  seacoast.  Just 
east  of  the  boundary  between  Canada  and  Alaska  at  a 
point  some  twenty  miles  west  of  Herschel  Island,  they 
come  nearer  to  the  coast  than  at  any  point  between  the 
Mackenzie  River  and  Cape  Lisburne  near  Bering  Straits. 
There  are  only  six  or  eight  miles  of  level  prairie  separat- 
ing the  coast  from  the  first  foothills,  and  the  mountains 
proper  are  not  over  fifteen  miles  from  the  sea.  At  the 
Alaska  boundary  they  are  twenty  or  more  miles  inland 
and  as  you  go  west  they  become  farther  and  farther  away 
until  in  the  vicinity  of  Barter  Island  Captain  Leavitt 
estimated  them  to  be  about  thirty  or  thirty-five  miles  in- 
land. They  would  be  at  least  forty  miles  inland  from 
Flaxman  Island,  which  is  about  fifty  miles  west  of  Barter 
Island. 

But  the  mountains  would  be  unlikely  to  guide  us  for 
the  spring  fogs  and  snowstorms  would  prevent  that.  Our 
hope  was  to  recognize  Barter  Island  when  we  came  to  it. 
We  would  then  estimate  carefully  our  daily  traveling 
distances  beyond  that  and  when  we  got  fifty  miles  west 
of  Barter  Island  we  would  search  carefully  or  wait  for 


176        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

clear  weather.  In  case  of  clear  weather  Captain  Leavitt 
thought  there  would  be  no  difficulty  in  finding  the  Duchess 
of  Bedford.  He  described  Flaxman  Island  as  being  five 
or  six  miles  long,  a  mile  or  two  wide  and  in  few  places 
more  than  fifteen  or  twenty  feet  high.  The  masts  of  a 
ship  anchored  behind  the  island  would,  therefore,  be  vis- 
ible above  it. 

Those  unfamiliar  with  the  north  coast  of  Alaska  might 
think  that  distinguishing  at  a  distance  between  the  main- 
land and  the  islands  would  be  easy.  It  is  difficult, 
however,  for  the  islands,  although  some  of  them  grass- 
covered,  are  little  more  than  overgrown  sandpits.  Flax- 
man  Island,  for  instance,  is  only  about  three  miles  from 
the  mainland  and  a  sledge  traveler  viewing  it  from  sea- 
ward is  likely  to  mistake  it  for  a  low  promontory  rather 
than  a  separate  body  of  land. 

Our  dog  team  was  the  poorest  I  have  ever  seen  in  the 
Arctic,  either  before  or  since.  Captain  Leavitt  had  seen 
nothing  like  it.  There  were  only  two  passably  good  dogs 
in  it,  one  belonging  to  me  and  one  to  Cape  York. 

As  related  before,  I  had  purchased  two  dogs  from  Sten 
in  the  fall  but  one  of  them  had  died  under  peculiar  circum- 
stances. There  had  been  a  woman  and  her  adopted  son 
staying  at  Sten's  house.  They  decided  one  day  they 
wanted  to  make  a  trip  and,  as  they  had  only  one  dog  to 
pull  a  small  sled  with  their  bedding,  I  lent  them  the  better 
one  of  mine.  He  was  a  powerful  and  in  every  way  a 
good  dog  and  had  had  an  interesting  history. 

Two  years  before  when  Captain  Amundsen  had  been 
wintering  at  King  William  Island  to  the  north  of  Hudson 
Bay  there  had  been  in  Hudson  Bay  the  ship  Arctic,  under 
command  of  Inspector  Moody,  of  the  Royal  Northwest 
Mounted  Police.    Hearing  that  Amundsen  was  wintering 


IN  SEARCH  OF  OUR  OWN  EXPEDITION    177 

in  the  North,  Inspector  Moody  wanted  to  offer  him  some 
courtesy  and  purchased  a  team  of  the  best  dogs  obtainable 
in  that  region  to  send  to  Amundsen  as  a  present.  But 
Amundsen  already  had  all  the  good  dogs  he  could  use  and 
was  having  the  difficulty  all  northern  travelers  know  of 
finding  sufficient  food  for  them.  To  show  his  appreci- 
ation of  Inspector  Moody's  gift  he  kept  one  dog  from  the 
team  but  returned  the  others  with  an  explanation  of  the 
cause.  The  next  year  Captain  Amundsen  had  tried  to 
sail  west  to  the  Pacific  but  had  been  frozen  in  (as  we  have 
explained)  at  King  Point  and  had  spent  the  winter  there 
as  a  neighbor  to  Sten,  for  Amundsen's  winter  camp  was 
but  a  few  hundred  yards  away  from  the  wreck  of  Sten's 
schooner  Bonanza.  The  next  summer  when  he  sailed 
away  Amundsen  made  Sten  a  present  of  a  whole  dog  team 
which  he  had  brought  from  Greenland  and  of  this  one 
dog  from  Hudson  Bay.  The  Hudson  Bay  dog  was  so 
much  bigger  and  stronger  than  the  Greenland  dogs  and 
was  so  likely  to  injure  them  if  they  got  into  a  fight,  that 
Sten  was  glad  to  sell  him  to  me  although  he  was  the  best 
of  all  his  dogs. 

So  when  the  widow  and  her  son  wanted  to  make  their 
trip,  I  loaned  them  The  Owl — that  being  our  name  for 
the  Hudson  Bay  dog.  This  was  some  months  after  my 
trip  across  the  Mackenzie  delta  with  Roxy  and  I  had  for- 
gotten the  peculiar  Eskimo  point  of  view  when  it  comes 
to  feeding  dogs.  On  the  trip  the  woman  and  boy  were 
stormbound  several  days  at  King  Point  and  during  that 
time  they  ran  out  of  food.  I  happened  to  be  making  a 
short  trip  at  that  time.  When  I  met  them  I  was  astounded 
to  see  that  although  their  own  dog  was  fat,  mine  that  I 
had  lent  them  looked  like  a  skeleton.  When  I  asked  how 
this  happened,  I  was  told  they  had  run  out  of  food  and 


i78        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

that,  as  I  had  provided  none  for  my  dog,  naturally  they 
had  stopped  feeding  him  before  they  stopped  feeding 
their  own. 

This  meeting  took  place  at  an  Eskimo  camp.  I  un- 
hitched The  Owl  from  the  widow's  sled  and  took  off  his 
harness,  which  was  made  of  braided  hemp.  I  then  went 
into  the  Eskimo  house  to  ask  for  a  fish  to  give  to  the  dog. 
I  was  handed  the  fish  at  once,  but  when  I  got  out  with 
it  I  saw  the  last  of  the  hempen  harness  disappearing 
down  the  dog's  throat.  He  had  been  ravenously  hungry, 
and  some  grease  at  some  time  or  other  had  been  spilled 
on  the  harness.  This  made  it  smell  to  him  like  food  and 
he  had  eaten  it.  I  knew  his  death  was  bound  to  follow 
unless  I  could  make  him  throw  it  up.  We  poured  a  pint 
or  more  of  seal  oil  down  his  throat,  hoping  to  induce  him 
to  vomit.  He  threw  up  the  oil  sure  enough,  but  the  har- 
ness stuck  in  his  stomach.  Two  days  later  he  was  suf- 
fering such  agony  that  he  had  to  be  shot. 

This  was  to  me  a  tragic  experience  both  because  I  had 
been  fond  of  the  dog  and  because  I  was  getting  fond  of 
the  Eskimos  as  a  people  and  did  not  like  to  find  such 
disagreeable  characteristics  cropping  out.  I  must  say 
before  leaving  this  subject  that,  although  both  the  woman 
and  Roxy  were  justified  by  a  theory  which  the  Eskimos 
well  understood,  in  starving  my  dogs  when  they  fed  their 
own,  the  rest  of  the  people  disapproved  of  them  for  doing 
such  things  and  both  of  them  were  thought  less  of  by  their 
countrymen  after  than  before. 

After  The  Owl's  death  I  had  one  fairly  good  dog  left 
and  Cape  York  owned  a  willing  enough  dog,  but  tiny. 
It  was  the  intention  that  Cape  York  should  return  to 
Herschel  Island  after  delivering  me  at  Flaxman,  and  so 
we  tried  to  borrow  several  other  dogs  for  the  trip.     I 


IN  SEARCH  OF  OUR  OWN  EXPEDITION     179 

succeeded  in  borrowing  four  but  it  turned  out  that  none 
of  them  was  worth  his  feed.  They  were  small  and  also 
poor  in  flesh.  One  was  larger  than  the  others  and  looked 
better  but  he  turned  out  to  have  fits  resembling  epilepsy 
with  which  he  was  seized  two  or  three  times  a  day.  He 
used  to  foam  at  the  mouth,  lying  in  a  fit  for  a  few  min- 
utes, after  which  he  got  up  but  was  dizzy  and  apparently 
out  of  his  head  for  an  hour  or  so.  After  two  or  three 
hours  of  normal  pulling  he  would  have  another  fit. 

This  spring  journey  gave  me  several  new  experiences. 
One  of  these  was  with  "diffused  light,"  which  is  among 
the  chief  annoyances  of  arctic  travel.  This  trouble  comes 
when  the  sky  is  uniformly  clouded  over  and  the  clouds 
just  thick  enough  so  that  they  let  through  most  of  the 
sun's  light  without  revealing  just  where  the  sun  is.  If 
the  position  of  the  sun  in  the  sky  is  even  faintly  visible, 
then  the  case  is  not  so  bad,  for  discernible  shadows  will 
then  appear  in  the  lee  of  snowdrifts,  ice  snags,  etc.  But 
when  you  cannot  see  the  sun  there  are  no  shadows.  The 
snowdrifts  are  white  and  the  ice  snags  white  and  there  is 
nothing  to  enable  you  to  distinguish  between  them. 

The  storms  of  winter  sculpture  the  snow  into  ridges 
which  we  call  drifts.  If  you  have  not  seen  snowdrifts, 
just  imagine  that  the  surface  of  an  ocean  or  a  big  lake 
is  first  ruffled  by  a  moderate  storm  and  then  suddenly 
frozen  solid  so  that  every  wave  and  billow  retains  its 
position  as  they  do  on  a  painted  canvas.  Traveling  over 
such  a  snow  surface  is  disagreeable  enough  when  the  sun 
is  shining  and  gives  you  shadows  enough  in  the  low  places 
so  that  you  can  distinguish  a  ridge  from  a  trough.  But 
under  the  conditions  of  "diffused  light"  the  snow  before 
you,  no  matter  how  rough  in  reality,  looks  perfectly 
smooth.     And  still  that  is  hardly  the  word.     It  rather 


180        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

looks  as  if  there  were  nothing  there  and  as  if  you  were 
stepping  into  space  each  time  you  lift  your  foot.  You 
never  know  when  you  are  going  to  step  into  a  hole  or  stub 
your  foot  against  a  ridge  and,  consequently,  you  must 
walk  with  the  caution  of  a  blind  man  who  cannot  see  the 
things  he  may  stumble  over. 

All  this  would  not  be  so  bad  if  you  really  had  the 
strength  of  mind  to  realize  that  your  eyes  are  useless. 
But  you  are  continual^  trying  your  best  to  see,  and  the 
strain  brings  on  the  condition  known  as  snowblindness. 
You  may  become  "snowblind"  on  shipboard  from  the 
glare  of  a  smooth  sea  or  lake,  and  you  may  become  snow- 
blind  on  a  snow  field  when  the  sun  is  bright  in  the  sky 
and  the  light  is  so  intense  that  it  is  difficult  to  keep  the 
eyes  open.  But  neither  of  these  conditions  is  half  as  bad 
as  the  subdued  glare  of  diffused  arctic  spring  light. 

One  thing  about  snowblindness  is  that  each  time  you 
have  it  your  eyes  are  weakened  a  little  and  you  are  pre- 
disposed to  a  second  attack.  For  this  reason  white  men 
who  are  new  in  the  Arctic  are  at  first  some  of  them  com- 
paratively immune.  An  Eskimo  who  has  been  exposed  to 
this  light  condition  from  childhood  is  likely  to  become 
snowblind  before  a  white  man  or  negro  feels  the  least 
twinge  in  his  eyes. 

This  happened  to  Cape  York  when  we  had  traveled 
something  over  a  hundred  miles  west  of  Herschel  Island 
and  thought  we  must  be  approaching  Barter  Island. 
Captain  Leavitt  had  given  us  some  flour  and  I  had  se- 
cured seal  oil  from  an  ao.  This  made  the  necessary 
ingredients  and  in  the  evening  after  camping  I  was  fry- 
ing doughnuts  when  Cape  York  asked  me  whether  the 
grease  was  not  getting  too  hot.  I  assured  him  it  was  not 
and  asked  what  made  him  think  so.    He  said  it  seemed 


IN  8:: ARCH  OF  OUR  OWN  EXPEDITION     181 

to  him  that  there  was  smoke  in  the  tent — for  it  was  now 
too  warm  for  snowhouses  and  we  were  using  a  tent  in- 
stead. After  he  had  looked  carefully  at  the  pan  in  which 
the  doughnuts  were  simmering  and  had  assured  himself 
there  was  no  smoke,  he  announced  that  he  must  be  get- 
ting snowblind  and  said  we  should  probably  not  be  able 
to  travel  the  next  day.  He  hoped  it  would  not  be  a  bad 
attack;  perhaps  one  day's  delay  would  be  all. 

But  it  turned  out  to  be  a  bad  attack.  Before  we  had 
supper  eaten  the  tears  were  beginning  to  run  down  Cape 
York's  cheeks  and  his  eyes,  instead  of  feeling  as  if  there 
were  smoke  in  them,  felt  as  if  there  were  grains  of  sand 
under  the  eyelids.  As  usual,  I  made  a  long  entry  in  my 
diary.  This  took  me  about  half  an  hour  and  by  that  time 
my  companion  had  begun  to  moan  with  a  pain  in  the  eye- 
balls which  resembles  the  shooting  pains  of  toothache. 
This  was  the  first  time  I  had  seen  snowblindness  and  the 
severity  of  it  was  a  revelation  to  me.  I  had  imagined  that 
it  was  a  kind  of  temporary  blindness  and  had  not  realized 
that  it  was  painful. 

That  night  I  was  awikened  now  and  then  by  Cape 
York's  moaning.  I  offe  ed  to  do  whatever  I  could  but 
he  said  there  was  nothing  to  do  but  what  he  was  doing, 
which  was  to  crouch  on  all  fours  with  his  head  covered 
by  a  blanket.  The  cover  was  necessary  to  keep  out  the 
light  for  it  was  spring  now  and  the  nights  were  no  longer 
dark  except  for  two  or  three  hours  around  midnight. 

All  the  next  day  the  pain  in  Cape  York's  eyes  was  un- 
abated. The  first  sign  of  improvement  was  that  towards 
midnight  he  fell  asleep.  Next  morning  when  I  woke  up 
he  was  cooking  breakfast  with  his  eyes  protected  by  col- 
ored goggles  which  we  had  secured  from  Captain  Leavitt. 
The  pain  was  no  longer  intense,  he  said,  but  tears  were 


1 82        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NOITH 

still  running  from  his  eyes  and  the  eyelids  were  swollen — 
perhaps  partly  because  he  had  been  rubbing  them  so 
much.  By  evening  of  the  second  day  he  could  keep  his 
eyes  open  within  the  tent,  but  he  told  me  *hat  everything 
looked  double.  He  said  that  when  he  looked  at  me  it 
sometimes  seemed  as  if  I  had  three  eyes  and  sometimes  as 
if  I  had  four. 

The  morning  of  the  third  day  Cape  York  had  gone  out- 
side the  tent  door  and  came  in  with  great  excitement, 
saying  there  were  caribou  on  a  nearby  hillside.  I  went 
out  and  sure  enough  there  they  were  about  a  mile  away. 
These  were  the  first  caribou  I  had  seen,  for  the  Macken- 
zie district  is  a  fish  and  rabbit  count  -y  with  a  few  moose 
in  the  willows  but  ordinarily  nowadays  no  caribou.  We 
had  seen  caribou  tracks  when  I  was  on  the  way  with 
Roxy  to  Tuktuyaktok.  These  had  been  animals  crossing 
from  the  mainland  to  Richard  Island.  On  the  Eskimo 
Lakes  with  Harrison  we  heard  of  Eskimos  living  two  or 
three  days'  journey  away  from  him  who  had  killed  a  few, 
but  in  general  that  is  not  a  cvribou  country  either,  at 
least  nowadays. 

The  Eskimos  say  that  before  the  whalers  came  and 
induced  the  Eskimos  to  kill  so  many  caribou  to  feed 
the  ships,  there  used  to  be  considerable  numbers  just 
east  of  the  Mackenzie.  Captain  Leavitt  told  me  that 
on  the  mainland  just  south  of  Herschel  Island  they  often 
had  caribou  in  the  spring,  and  thirty  or  forty  miles  south 
of  Herschel  Island  in  and  beyond  the  mountains  there 
were  supposed  to  be  a  good  many.  None  had  been  seen 
north  of  the  mountains  this  winter  in  that  locality  but 
Captain  Leavitt  had  told  me  that  as  we  traveled  west 
the  chances  of  seeing  them  would  become  greater  and 
that  he  believed  that  south  of  Barter  Island  we  might  find 


IN  SEARCH  OF  OUR  OWN  EXPEDITION     183 

some.  This  forecast  was  now  coming  true.  Not  only 
were  the  caribou  there  but  they  were  on  a  hillside  and, 
therefore,  probably  on  Barter  Island,  for  Captain  Leavitt 
had  said  it  was  the  first  hilly  country  we  would  come  to. 

I  know  now  that  I  should  have  gone  after  those  caribou 
myself.  The  Eskimos  of  northwestern  Alaska  are  excel- 
lent seal  hunters  but  they  do  not  see  any  caribou  unless 
they  leave  their  own  country  to  go  southeast  into  the 
Kuvuk  or  Noatak  valleys  or  unless  they  join  a  whaler 
and  later  become  caribou  hunters  in  the  service  of  the 
ships  in  the  Herschel  Island  district.  I  did  not  realize 
this  fully  at  the  time  and  took  it  for  granted  that  Cape 
York  was  a  good  caribou  hunter.  I  thought  only  of  the 
condition  of  his  eyes,  but  he  said  that  they  were  not  bad 
now  and  he  would  try  it.  We  could  not  both  go  because 
one  of  us  had  to  watch  the  dogs  to  keep  them  from  mak- 
ing a  noise.  So  long  as  one  man  was  around  the  tent 
they  would  remain  quiet,  but  if  both  of  us  left  they  would 
probably  set  up  a  howl  because  they  were  tied  and  could 
not  follow.  If  they  were  not  tied  they  would  follow  us. 
Either  would  have  been  fatal  to  any  chance  of  getting 
caribou. 

I  did  not  see  how  Cape  York  hunted  the  caribou,  for 
before  he  got  started  from  the  tent  they  had  wandered 
over  the  hill  to  the  far  side.  In  half  an  hour  I  heard 
shooting  and  in  about  an  hour  he  came  back  with  a  long 
explanation  of  just  why  he  had  failed  to  kill  anything. 
One  thing  was  that  he  had  miscalculated  the  wind  and 
they  had  heard  and  perhaps  winded  him  while  he  was  still 
behind  the  cover  of  a  hill.  When  he  got  to  the  top  of 
the  hill  they  were  running  some  distance  off.  According 
to  his  account,  he  should  have  been  able  to  kill  them, 
nevertheless,  had  it  not  been  that  when  he  aimed  the 


1 84        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

rifle  he  saw  two  rifle  sights  where  one  should  have  been, 
for  he  was  still  suffering  the  last  effects  of  the  snowblind- 
ness.  The  comfortable  part  of  the  story  he  brought  back 
was  that  he  felt  sure  this  was  Barter  Island.  He  said 
we  could  soon  verify  that  for  he  had  heard  there  was  a 
sandspit  running  west  from  the  island  on  which  there 
were  ruins  of  an  ancient  Eskimo  village. 

When  we  started  traveling  this  was  verified,  for  we 
came  to  the  sandspit  and  to  the  ruins  of  several  Eskimo 
houses  made  of  earth  and  wood.  To  the  south  on  the 
mainland  we  saw  a  house  that  looked  as  if  it  were  in- 
habited. This  turned  out  correct,  but  the  people  were 
off  on  a  journey.  We  went  into  the  house,  for  that  is  the 
custom  of  the  country.  As  Cape  York's  eyes  were  not 
fully  recovered  and  as  I  found  several  books  and  maga- 
zines to  read,  we  decided  to  spend  the  night.  There  was 
also  the  possibility  of  the  occupants  coming  home. 

Evidently  the  owner  of  this  house  was  a  white  man,  for 
there  were  books  on  mining,  assaying  and  the  like.  Some 
of  the  books  had  on  them  the  names  of  Leffingwell  and 
Mikkelsen  and  had  evidently  come  from  our  ship. 

The  second  day  after  leaving  this  cabin  the  weather 
was  thick  and  we  walked  out  of  a  snow  squall  almost  into 
an  Eskimo  camp.  This  was  a  tiny  house  occupied  by  a 
couple  with  an  infant  child.  Now  we  learned  exactly 
where  we  were  and  got  information  of  various  sorts.  To 
begin  with,  the  man  whose  house  we  had  occupied  two 
days  before  was  Ned  Arey.  I  had  heard  much  of  him 
from  Captain  Leavitt.  Arey  is  of  Pilgrim  descent,  born 
and  brought  up  in  Massachusetts.  He  first  came  to  the 
Arctic  as  a  whaler  but  soon  became  interested  in  mining 
and  has  traveled  over  a  large  part  of  northern  Alaska, 
prospecting  for  gold.    At  first  he  had  a  good  income  which 


IN  SEARCH  OF  OUR  OWN  EXPEDITION     185 

came  to  him  annually  from  his  parents  in  Massachusetts. 
Later  this  failed  and  he  made  his  living  from  the  foxes  he 
trapped,  for  he  was  never  very  lucky  with  the  gold.  All 
this  I  knew  from  Captain  Leavitt,  and  also  that  Arey 
was  one  of  the  most  amiable  and  entertaining  of  men. 
We  learned  from  these  Eskimos  that  he  was  now  on  a 
visit  to  our  ship  at  Flaxman  Island. 

About  the  expedition  we  received  two  pieces  of  serious 
news.  The  lesser  of  the  evils  was  that  the  ship  had 
sprung  a  leak.  As  she  was  for  the  present  frozen  into 
six  or  seven  feet  of  ice,  she  could  not  sink.  Her  hold  was 
full  of  water,  however,  and  she  was  expected  to  sink  in 
the  spring  when  the  ice  thawed  which  now  held  her  up. 
Accordingly  ail  her  cargo  had  been  removed  to  the  land, 
she  had  been  partly  broken  up,  and  from  the  lumber  a 
house  had  been  built  ashore. 

The  more  serious  piece  of  news  was  that  Leffingwell, 
Mikkelsen  and  the  first  mate,  Storker  Storkerson,  were 
dead.  Against  the  advice  of  all  the  Eskimos  they  had 
gone  away  from  land  north  over  the  moving  sea  ice.  A 
week  or  two  later  one  of  their  dogs  had  come  back.  Evi- 
dently this  was  the  only  survivor  of  the  party.  The  Eski- 
mos thought  that  the  two  sleds  and  all  the  men  and  dogs 
had  probably  sunk  through  thin  ice  in  trying  to  make  a 
crossing  from  one  solid  floe  to  another,  and  that  this  one 
dog  had  wriggled  free  from  the  harness  and  had  eventually 
made  his  way  to  land.  For  some  days  after  the  dog  came 
ashore  the  Eskimos  had  hoped  that  perhaps  one  of  the 
men  would  also  get  ashore.  This  hope  had  now  been  given 
up.  An  Eskimo  might  make  a  living  for  a  long  time  by 
hunting  but  white  men  would  surely  die  unless  they  got 
back  to  people  within  a  few  days. 

We  were  told  that  the  camp  at  Flaxman  Island  was  now 


1 86        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

under  the  command  of  Dr.  Howe  and  that  Ned  Arey 
had  gone  over  there  to  give  Dr.  Howe  the  benefit  of  his 
long  experience  in  the  country  and  to  make  himself  gen- 
erally helpful. 

The  bad  news  inclined  us  all  the  more  to  hurry  on  to 
Flaxman  Island.  It  was  late  in  the  day,  however,  so  we 
slept  over  night.  The  next  morning  we  started  early 
and  made  the  remaining  twenty  miles  to  Flaxman  Island 
by  midafternoon.  On  arrival  at  the  camp  we  found  the 
physical  conditions  as  described  by  the  Eskimos.  The 
ship  had  been  dismantled  and  a  house  had  been  built  on 
shore  where  the  party  were  now  living  under  command 
of  Dr.  George  P.  Howe,  of  Boston,  Massachusetts,  a 
Harvard  man  whom  I  had  known  in  Cambridge.  He  had 
three  white  men  and  there  were  some  Eskimos  helping 
about  the  camp.  As  a  visitor  we  found  Ned  Arey  with 
his  Eskimo  wife  and  family. 

But  we  got  a  new  story  as  to  the  death  of  the  three 
officers.  Dr.  Howe  did  not  think  they  were  dead.  The 
Eskimos  had  from  the  first  believed  that  any  journey 
out  over  the  sea  ice  would  be  suicidal.  The  start  had 
been  made  under  ordinary  ice  exploring  conditions,  but 
the  party  had  not  been  gone  more  than  a  few  days  when 
the  Eskimos  already  knew  they  were  dead.  Later  when 
a  dog  came  ashore  this  confirmed  them  in  the  belief.  Dr. 
Howe  thought  everything  was  all  right.  The  intention  of 
the  ice  party  had  been  to  stay  away  about  two  months. 
The  time  was  not  quite  up  and  they  might  come  back  any 
day. 

Ned  Arey's  opinion  was  intermediate  between  that  of 
the  Eskimos  and  of  Dr.  Howe.  He  thought  that  the  party 
might  have  survived  a  certain  length  of  time  out  on  the 
ice  but  that  they  had  now  been  gone  too  long  and  the 


IN  SEARCH  OF  OUR  OWN  EXPEDITION     187 

chance  of  their  safety  was  small.  Furthermore,  he  con- 
sidered that  the  arrival  of  the  dog  was  a  fairly  conclusive 
evidence  of  tragedy. 

On  the  whole  my  own  opinion  was  a  little  more  opti- 
mistic than  even  that  of  Dr.  Howe,  for  I  had  gathered 
from  the  polar  books  I  had  read  that  ice  travel  was  pos- 
sible, although  dangerous,  and  could  not  see  why  it  should 
be  much  worse  to  the  north  of  Alaska  than  in  other  parts 
of  the  world.  I  have  since  learned  that  it  is  somewhat 
more  dangerous  than  the  average  in  this  locality,  for  the 
currents  are  specially  violent  and  the  ice,  in  consequence, 
particularly  treacherous.  Even  had  I  known  this,  I 
should  still  have  expected  the  party  to  come  back,  for 
they  had  been  outfitted  with  provisions  ample  for  a  time 
somewhat  longer  than  their  absence  had  as  yet 
amounted  to. 

Dr.  Howe's  opinion  was  that  our  expedition  would  be 
over  that  summer.  The  Duchess  would  probably  sink  in 
the  spring  and  we  would  have  to  take  passage  with  whal- 
ing ships  to  the  outside  world.  This  was  a  great  disap- 
pointment to  him,  but  even  more  disappointing  to  me, 
for  my  heart  had  been  set  upon  visiting  the  Victoria  Isl- 
and Eskimos. 

When  Leffingwell  had  first  proposed  to  me  in  Chicago 
that  I  go  with  him  to  Victoria  Island  the  prospect  had 
seemed  attractive.  It  is  an  island  much  bigger  than 
England.  More  than  half  a  century  before  our  time  some 
British  explorers  had  examined  a  considerable  part  of 
the  coast  and  had  met  some  Eskimos  in  two  or  three 
places.  It  seemed  probable  that  these  explorers  had  not 
seen  more  than  a  small  fraction  of  the  native  population. 
Furthermore,  most  of  the  Eskimos  actually  seen  by  the 
explorers  had  probably  died  since  then.     It  would  be  a 


i88        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

fascinating  thing  to  visit  these  people,  the  ancestors  of 
most  of  whom  had  never  seen  a  white  man  and  who  them- 
selves certainly  never  had.  If  there  were  a  few  living 
who  remembered  from  their  childhood  the  days  of  the 
early  explorers  this  would  make  the  case  still  more  inter- 
esting. Most  thrilling  of  all  was  the  possibility  that  we 
might  find  some  old  man  who  could  give  us  from  memory 
a  solution  of  what  to  the  world  of  Europeans  is  still  the 
mystery  of  the  fate  of  Sir  John  Franklin's  men,  whose 
two  ships  had  been  set  fast  in  the  ice  just  to  the  east  of 
Victoria  Island.  All  of  his  men  were  supposed  to  have 
died  there  or  to  the  southeast  but  it  was  possible  that 
some  of  them  came  ashore  in  Victoria  Island.  They 
might  even  have  lived  there  for  a  few  years,  if  not  in- 
definitely. 

When  I  had  met  Captain  Klinkenberg  at  Herschel 
Island  the  past  summer  my  interest  had  been  increased. 
He  had  actually  seen  the  Victoria  Island  people,  but  pre- 
sumably only  a  small  fraction  of  them.  He  had  described 
them  as  having  copper  weapons  where  other  primitive 
Eskimos  usually  have  stone.  But  mysterious  above  every- 
thing, was  his  information  that  a  certain  small  percentage 
of  them  differed  from  the  rest  and  differed  from  the  Alaska 
Eskimos  Klinkenberg  knew  so  well,  in  having  a  complex- 
ion which  made  them  resemble  Europeans.  He  had  said 
that  some  of  them  had  blue  eyes  and  light  hair. 

Dr.  Howe  and  I  talked  much  about  this  fascinating 
problem  and  both  said  we  would  give  anything  to  be  able 
to  go  there.  We  agreed,  however,  that  the  best  way  of 
getting  there  would  probably  be  to  leave  the  country  for 
now  and  to  organize  a  new  expedition  later.  All  our  plans 
had  hinged  on  the  Duchess  of  Bedford  and  when  she  was 
sunk  we  would  have  to  make  a  new  start. 


IN  SEARCH  OF  OUR  OWN  EXPEDITION    189 

This  problem  of  the  strange  Eskimos  occupied  my  mind 
continually  more  and  more  as  time  passed.  We  knew 
that  no  whalers  had  been  there,  for  the  first  whalers  in 
the  western  Arctic  had  come  in  to  Herschel  Island  only 
in  1889  and  the  captains  of  most  of  those  early  ships 
were  still  captains  in  the  present  fleet.  I  had  learned 
from  them  that  no  whaler  had  ever  gone  ashore  in  Victoria 
Island,  except  that  Captain  Cottle  had  once  landed  a 
small  party  of  Alaska  Eskimos  to  pursue  some  caribou 
they  saw  from  shipboard.  The  caribou  had  been  killed 
and  the  Eskimos  had  come  aboard  with  the  meat  without 
reporting  having  seen  even  signs  of  people.  It  had  been 
the  common  whaler  belief  that  Victoria  Island,  although 
formerly  inhabited  by  Eskimos,  was  now  uninhabited, 
and  Klinkenberg's  discovery  had,  therefore,  seemed  even 
more  remarkable  to  them  than  it  had  to  me.  Whalers 
have  never  reached  Victoria  Island  from  the  east  side,  as 
I  knew  in  advance  and  as  I  verified  later  by  inquiries 
from  Captain  George  Comer,  a  veteran  of  the  eastern 
whaling  fleet,  who  still  lives  in  Connecticut. 

I  gradually  made  up  my  mind  to  solve  sometime  and 
somehow  the  mystery  of  the  white  Eskimos  of  Victoria 
Island.    The  opportunity  did  not  come  for  three  years. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

A  SPRING  JOURNEY  IN  AN  ESKIMO  SKIN  BOAT 

At  Flaxman  Island  I  found  a  well-stocked  library  and  the 
leisure  to  write  and  to  think.  After  an  active  winter  un- 
der strange  circumstances,  the  change  was  welcome.  The 
shelves  were  full  of  scientific  books.  I  read  Osier's 
''Practice  of  Medicine,"  fascinating  as  a  novel,  and  Cham- 
berlain and  Salisbury's  three-volume  geology,  which  has 
for  its  theme  the  greatest  romance  of  all  the  romances — 
the  ancestry,  birth  and  development  of  our  world.  Then 
there  were  books  labeled  romances,  such  as  the  marvel 
stories  of  H.  G.  Wells.  There  were  whole  shelves  of  Tol- 
stoi and  of  the  English  classics.  Between  reading  these 
I  wrote  long  dissertations  on  what  I  had  seen  and  heard 
during  the  winter  and  on  what  I  thought  about  it  all. 

But  under  the  stimulation  of  an  arctic  climate  inactivity 
soon  palls  upon  one  who  has  tasted  the  wine  of  action. 
I  had  not  been  at  Flaxman  Island  more  than  a  week  when 
I  proposed  to  Dr.  Howe,  who  was  in  command  for  the 
time  being,  that  he  outfit  me  for  a  trip  back  to  Herschel 
Island.  He  did  this  and  I  made  the  journey,  but  as  it 
was  uneventful  I  shall  tell  nothing  about  it. 

During  my  absence  at  Herschel  Island  the  men  whom 
the  Eskimos  had  reported  dead  came  home  all  safe  from 
the  ice.  They  had  made  a  fine  exploration  a  hundred 
miles  north  from  Alaska.  The  theory  upon  which  they 
started  was  that  the  ocean  would  be  shallow  and  islands 
would,  therefore-,  probably  be  found  rising  here  and  there 

i  •  >*  > 


SPRING  JOURNEY  IN  A  SKIN  BOAT         191 

from  the  sea  bottom,  or  else  a  large  land.  So  sure  did 
they  feel  about  the  shallowness  of  the  ocean  that,  al- 
though they  intended  to  take  soundings  wherever  they 
went,  they  carried  a  line  of  only  2,000  feet,  expecting  it 
to  reach  bottom  whenever  desired.  This  was  so  far  from 
being  true  that  they  had  gone  only  about  thirty  miles 
from  land  when  they  came  to  where  the  sea  floor  settled 
rapidly  down  to  abysmal  depths.  This  was  taken  to 
mean  that  the  probability  of  land  beyond  was  small. 
They,  nevertheless,  kept  on  for  some  distance.  But  the 
ice  was  in  rapid  motion  and  everything  was  more  difficult 
than  they  had  expected,  so  they  presently  turned  back 
to  survey  some  more  of  the  "continental  shelf,"  as  we 
call  the  beginning  of  the  steep  slope  where  the  shoal 
waters  of  the  coastline  meet  the  deeps  of  the  ocean  proper. 
The  location  of  this  slope  is  considered  a  matter  of  great 
scientific  importance. 

While  engaged  in  determining  the  continental  shelf  the 
party  were  struck  by  an  easterly  gale  which  carried  the 
ice  they  were  on  so  swiftly  to  the  westward  that  they 
were  in  danger  of  being  taken  into  the  open  sea  beyond 
Point  Barrow.  A  calm  came  just  in  time  and  they  were 
able  to  get  across  from  the  moving  floes  to  the  landfast 
ice  to  the  south  of  them,  and  thence  ashore. 

When  I  got  back  to  Flaxman  Island  Leffingwell  and 
Mikkelsen  confirmed  what  Dr.  Howe  had  conjectured — 
that  the  expedition  was  practically  over.  Leffingwell 
would  spend  another  year  in  the  vicinity,  for  he  was  a 
geologist  by  training  and  wanted  to  study  the  mountains 
to  the  south.  Mikkelsen  had  first  thought  of  making  a 
journey  eastward  in  a  small  boat  with  only  Storkerson 
as  a  companion  but  he  later  gave  that  up. 

At  Flaxman  Island  I  now  awaited  eagerly  the  coming 


192        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

of  my  first  arctic  summer.  The  winter  I  had  liked  very 
well.  It  had  resembled  in  general  the  twenty  winters 
I  have  lived  in  Dakota.  The  cold  had  been  no  more  in- 
tense than  the  Dakota  cold  although  somewhat  more  uni- 
form and  lasting  about  two  months  longer.  The  storms 
had  been  rather  milder  than  the  worst  Dakota  blizzards. 
The  long  periods  of  clear  and  cold  weather  had  been  more 
exhilarating  than  any  climate  I  had  known  before. 

But  although  the  winter  had  been  pleasant,  I  looked 
with  the  keenest  interest  toward  the  coming  of  spring. 
The  beginnings  of  spring  were  disappointing.  The  latter 
part  of  April  resembled  January  in  Scotland  or  Nebraska, 
and  was  rather  disagreeable.  May  was  worse.  It  re- 
sembled the  worst  kind  of  January  you  get  in  the  south 
of  England  or  in  Missouri.  The  first  rain  came  on  the 
6th  of  May. 

One  of  the  pleasant  things  about  the  North  is  that  the 
winter  snow  is  perfectly  dry.  But  in  May  the  northern 
snow  has  the  sogginess  familiar  in  southern  countries  and 
makes  your  feet  wet  unless  you  wear  water  boots.  We 
did  commence  wearing  the  Eskimo  style  seal  skin  water 
boots,  which  are  lighter  and  in  every  way  better  than 
any  other  water  boots  known  to  me.  But  although  they 
are  good  water  boots  for  summer,  they  are  cold  footgear 
for  spring,  for  the  chill  of  the  damp  snow  outside  of  them 
penetrates  through  and  produces  the  same  sort  of  con- 
dens;!  t ion  on  the  inside  that  you  get  from  wearing  rubber 
boots  wading  in  cold  water.  Although  perfectly  water- 
proof, neither  rubber  boots  nor  seal  skin  boots  can  keep 
your  feet  dry,  for  they  become  wet  inside  with  the  con- 
densation of  the  body  moisture.  You  can  travel  through 
six  months  of  winter  with  feet  dry  every  day  inside  deer 
skin  boots  that  are  not  waterproof,  but  you  become  wet 


SPRING  JOURNEY  IN  A  SKIN  BOAT         193 

in  six  hours  of  May  travel  though  your  boots  be  water- 
tight. 

At  Herschel  Island  the  mountains  are  only  twenty  or 
thirty  miles  to  the  south  but  at  Flaxman  Island  they  are 
ten  or  fifteen  miles  farther  away.  The  spring  heat  takes 
effect  sooner  on  the  mountain  slopes  than  on  the  level 
prairie  and,  accordingly,  the  more  easterly  rivers  opened 
earlier.  On  my  last  trip  east  I  found  the  Firth  River 
open  the  10th  of  May  and  the  water  from  it  spreading 
in  a  wide  fan  over  many  square  miles  of  sea  ice  just 
west  of  Herschel  Island.  The  Kugruak  River  at  Flax- 
man  Island  did  not  open  till  the  middle  of  May.  The 
water  from  such  a  river  flows  several  miles  out  on  the  ice, 
perhaps  six  or  eight,  and  finally  meets  a  tide  crack  through 
which  it  can  join  the  sea  beneath.  These  tide  cracks 
are  formed  where  the  shore  ice  that  lies  solidly  on  the 
bottom  meets  the  ice  farther  out  that  lies  over  deeper 
water  and  rises  and  falls  with  the  tides.  These  cracks 
are  kept  open  all  winter  by  the  ice  movement  and  are 
ready  to  receive  the  river  water  when  the  spring  freshets 
bring  it  to  the  ocean. 

Most  travelers  of  the  polar  regions  have  remarked  how 
suddenly  spring  comes.  It  does  come  more  rapidly  than 
in  more  southerly  countries,  but  gradually  nevertheless. 

There  are  many  signs  of  coming  spring  besides  the  in- 
creasing warmth  that  we  dislike  because  it  is  accom- 
panied by  increasing  cloudiness  and  a  heavier  and  heavier 
snowfall.  The  birds  are  one  of  these  signs.  A  few  kinds 
have  been  there  all  winter — ptarmigan  by  the  thousand, 
hawks,  owls  and  ravens  by  the  dozen.  The  first  snow 
buntings  appear  on  the  coast  early  in  April.  If  you  were 
far  out  on  the  sea  ice  where  it  is  in  rapid  movement  with 
much  open  water  between  the  cakes,  you  would  have  the 


194        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

seagulls  as  early  as  the  snow  buntings  come  to  the  coast. 
But  near  land  the  gulls  do  not  appear  until  about  the 
same  time  as  the  geese,  and  that  would  be  about  the  same 
time  as  the  first  rivers  break  up,  or  anywhere  between 
the  first  and  middle  of  May.  There  are  half  a  dozen 
different  kinds  of  geese  and  a  little  later  there  are  dozens 
of  kinds  of  ducks,  including  four  kinds  of  eider  ducks. 
A  very  few  cranes  and  a  somewhat  larger  number  of 
swans  come  about  the  same  time  as  the  ducks,  and  so  do 
the  loons.  About  a  hundred  varieties  of  smaller  birds 
come,  too,  some  of  them  early  and  others  later — plovers, 
snipes,  sandpipers,  etc. 

In  the  fall  at  Shingle  Point  I  had  seen  great  rejoicing 
among  the  children  when  the  first  snow  fell  and  when 
the  first  ice  came.  Now  at  Flaxman  Island  there  was 
also  rejoicing  among  the  people.  They  like  to  see  summer 
change  to  fall  but  they  also  like  to  see  winter  change  to 
spring,  although  the  joy  seemed  to  me  more  exuberant 
in  the  fall  than  in  the  spring.  One  reason  why  nobody 
in  the  North  can  wholly  like  the  summer  is  that  it  makes 
travel  so  difficult.  In  winter  all  the  rivers  and  lakes  are 
frozen  over  and  you  can  walk  or  travel  by  dog  sled  with- 
out interruption  in  any  direction.  In  the  summer  time 
you  cannot  use  sledges  at  all;  nor  could  wagons  be  used 
for  there  are  no  roads,  the  ground  is  rough,  and  there  is 
sticky  mud  in  many  places.  In  summer  the  dogs  can  be 
used  for  carrying  packs  only  and,  as  their  legs  are  short, 
they  cannot  be  trusted  to  carry  anything  that  must  be 
kept  dry,  for  they  will  accidentally  drag  their  packs 
through  water  in  crossing  streams.  In  hot  weather  they 
intentionally  lie  down  in  streams  and  in  ponds  to  cool 
off,  thus  making  their  load.;  wvt.  The  people  themselves 
are,  accordingly,  the  chief  beasts  of  burden  in  summer. 


SPRING  JOURNEY  IN  A  SKIN  BOAT         195 

This  makes  travel  much  less  pleasant  and  much  slower 
than  in  winter. 

Of  course,  the  same  summer  heat  that  makes  overland 
travel  difficult  makes  boat  travel  possible,  and  the  Eski- 
mos take  advantage  of  that.  The  spring  is,  therefore, 
the  time  for  making  boats  and  putting  boats  in  order. 
In  1906-07  a  good  many  of  the  Eskimos  owned  whale- 
boats  purchased  from  the  ships.  These  boats  are  about 
28  feet  or  30  feet  long,  will  carry  a  ton  of  freight  and 
sail  beautifully,  but  they  are  fragile,  difficult  to  keep  in 
repair  and  not  very  seaworthy  when  heavily  loaded.  The 
big  Eskimo  skin-boat  called  umiak  is  for  most  purposes 
far  better. 

When  the  white  whalers  first  came  to  the  north  coast 
of  Alaska  they  had  great  contempt  for  the  driftwood  on 
the  beaches  and  brought  with  them  lumber  which  they 
thought  would  be  preferable  for  use  in  making  the  frames 
of  the  Eskimo  umiaks.  At  first  the  Eskimos  were  talked 
into  this,  but  they  soon  gave  it  up  for  they  found  that  a 
frame  made  of  spruce  was  lighter  and  stronger  for  any 
given  dimension  than  a  frame  made  of  the  commercial 
lumber.  Thus  the  Eskimos  found  out  for  themselves 
what  many  white  men  never  knew  until  the  World  War 
came  with  its  demand  for  spruce  as  framework  for  air- 
planes. The  same  quality  that  makes  spruce  suitable  for 
airplane  frames  makes  it  suitable  for  the  frames  of  the 
umiaks. 

The  standard  size  umiak  is  designed  to  be  covered  with 
the  skins  of  seven  bearded  seals  and  is  from  thirty  to 
thirty-five  feet  long.  The  boat  is  flat-bottomed,  or  roughly 
dory  shaped. 

The  bearded  seals  (Erignathus  barbatus)  that  furnish 
skins  for  the  covers  weigh  from  six  to  eight  hundred 


196        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

pounds.  They  have  been  killed  sometime  during  the  win- 
ter or  previous  summer.  A  month  or  two  before  it  is  time 
to  make  the  skin-boats,  the  hides  are  put  into  tubs  or  bags 
and  kept  in  some  warm  place  until  all  the  hair  rots  off. 
At  the  same  time  that  the  hair  is  scraped  off  one  side  the 
fat  is  scraped  off  the  other  side  of  the  skin.  The  women 
then  sew  the  hides  together  with  a  double  seam.  The 
thread  is  braided  caribou  sinew  and  has  the  property  of 
swelling  when  it  gets  wet.  The  careful  sewing  by  the 
women  and  the  swelling  of  the  sinew  together  produce  the 
only  waterproof  seam  that  is  known  to  be  made  by  any 
people,  European  or  other.  This  is  the  same  seam  they 
sew  in  making  their  seal  skin  water  boots. 

The  seams  of  the  commercial  leather  hunting  boots  sold 
in  our  sportsmen's  outfitting  stores  are  generally  made 
waterproof  by  rubbing  grease  into  them.  A  boot  seam 
made  by  an  Eskimo  woman  does  not  need  any  water- 
proofing with  grease  and  she  will  consider  it  an  insult 
if  she  sees  any  one  rubbing  grease  on  the  seams  of  boots 
she  has  made,  the  implication  being  that  you  do  not  trust 
her  sewing.  In  the  case  of  the  umiaks,  however,  it  is 
the  custom  to  rub  grease  on  the  seams  just  before  launch- 
ing if  the  boats  are  dry  at  the  time.  When  once  water- 
soaked  they  never  leak. 

The  seal  skin  is  sewed  in  the  beginning  so  as  to  fit 
the  boat  frame,  but  only  roughly.  It  is  then  stretched 
and  lashed  on  the  frame  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  it  fit 
tightly.     When  it  dries  it  is  as  tight  as  a  drum. 

An  umiak  big  enough  to  carry  twenty  men  will  weigh 
only  four  or  five  hundred  pounds.  Two  stout  men,  one 
at  each  end,  can  carry  it,  and  four  men  can  carry  it 
easily.    In  the  spring  the  Esl  often  put  their  umiaks 

on  low  sledges,  then  put  their  household  «car  inside  the 


An  Umiak  and  Crew — North  Coast  of  Alaska 


The  Break-up  of  the  Sea  Ice  in  Spring 


SPRING  JOURNEY  IN  A  SKIN  BOAT         197 

umiak  and  commence  their  spring  journey  (if  it  is  going 
to  be  a  long  one)  several  weeks  before  the  ice  on  the 
rivers  or  ocean  breaks  up.  They  travel  along  until  the 
water  from  the  coastal  rivers  floods  the  ice.  At  first  this 
water  makes  travel  impossible,  for  it  soaks  into  the  snow 
that  is  on  the  ice  and  converts  it  into  a  foot  or  two  of 
slush.  Two  or  three  weeks  later  holes  will  have  opened 
all  over  the  ice,  the  water  will  have  drained  off  and  then 
you  can  travel  by  sled  for  two  or  three  more  weeks  until 
the  ice  finally  breaks  up  completely  under  the  heat  of 
the  sun  and  the  influence  of  the  winds  and  currents. 
Then  begins  the  boat  travel  proper.  This  may  be  by  any 
of  three  methods. 

In  traveling  up  river,  "tracking"  is  ordinarily  employed. 
A  long  rope  is  fastened  to  the  mast  of  the  boat  three  or 
four  feet  up  and  a  dog  team  is  hitched  to  the  other  end 
of  the  rope.  One  man  walks  along  the  river  bank  ahead 
of  the  dogs  and  the  rest  of  the  party  ride  in  the  boat,  one 
of  them  acting  as  steersman.  By  this  method  you  can 
travel  upstream,  even  against  a  strong  current,  with  a 
speed  of  from  two  to  four  miles  an  hour.  When  you  are 
going  down  stream  or  traveling  on  a  lake  or  on  the  ocean 
in  calm  weather,  you  can  use  either  paddles  or  oars.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  both  are  frequently  in  use  at  the  same 
time.  In  Greenland  the  men  are  said  to  have  a  prejudice 
against  oars,  only  women  using  them.  But  in  Alaska 
either  men  or  women  may  use  oars  and  either  may  use 
paddles. 

The  most  serious  defect  of  the  umiak  is  that  it  has  no 
keel  and  will  not  sail  into  the  wind.     But  if  you  have  a 
side  wind  or  a  fair  wind  it  sails  very  well  with  a  leg-of- 
mutton  or  any  other  type  of  ordinary  boat  sail. 
£ln  addition  to  its  lightness  and  the  ease  with  which 


198        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

it  can  be  carried  on  the  shoulders  of  men  over  a  portage 
or  freighted  by  dogs  on  a  sled,  the  umiak  has  many  other 
peculiar  advantages.  For  one  thing,  the  hides  it  is  made 
of  are  so  exceedingly  tough  that  you  can  sail  with  a  speed 
of  four  or  five  miles  an  hour  into  a  piece  of  ice  as  solid 
as  a  rock  with  little  danger  of  serious  injury.  You  may 
break  one  of  the  ribs  of  the  boat  but  that  will  merely  make 
a  little  dent  in  the  side  of  your  craft  and  can  be  fixed 
whenever  you  like.  If  you  tear  a  hole  in  the  boat  it  can 
be  readily  patched  up  by  the  Eskimo  women  with  their 
needles.  Another  great  advantage  is  the  ease  of  landing. 
You  can  land  on  any  beach  except  among  actual  rocks 
even  in  fairly  bad  weather.  This  is  partly  because  the 
boat  is  so  light  that  it  draws  very  little  water  and  partly 
because  the  bottom  is  flat.  The  light  draft  is  an  especial 
advantage  in  river  travel.^  A  whaleboat  carrying  a  ton 
of  freight  will  draw  about  efghteen  inches  where  an  umiak 
carrying  the  same  amount  of  freight  would  not  draw  more 
than  eight  or  ten  inches. 

In  some  ways  an  even  better  boat  than  the  umiak  is 
the  kayak.  This  has  the  outlines  of  a  racing  shell.  The 
frame  is  made  of  light  wood  and  whalebone.  The  entire 
craft  is  closed  in  so  that  the  waves  can  dash  over  it  with- 
out entering.  In  the  old  days  the  Eskimos  used  to  go  in 
waterproof  shirts  that  were  fastened  tight  around  the  neck 
of  the  wearer,  around  his  wrists  and  around  the  mouth  of 
the  kayak  in  such  a  way  that  even  if  it  capsized  no  water 
could  get  into  the  boat.  A  good  boatman  would  be  able 
to  right  himself  even  in  fairly  heavy  weather.  For  this 
reason  the  seal  hunting  Eskimos  go  out  on  the  ocean  in 
summer  weather  where  no  other  craft  of  the  same  size 
could  poa  ;l)ly  live.  A  special  use  of  the  kayak  is  in 
spearing  caribou  when  they  are  swimming  rivers  or  lakes. 


SPRING  JOURNEY  IN  A  SKIN  BOAT         199 

The  season  of  spring,  while  the  birds  are  becoming  more 
numerous  day  by  day  and  while  the  snow  is  slowly  disap- 
pearing, is  one  of  great  activity  among  the  Eskimos  in 
getting  their  boats  ready  for  summer  travel.  Either  be- 
fore the  ice  breaks  or  else  just  after  it  does  they  move 
from  their  winter  camps  to  some  good  fishing  locality. 
These  are  places  where  the  water  is  muddy  so  that  the 
fish  cannot  see  the  nets  in  the  perpetual  summer  daylight. 

On  the  north  coast  of  Alaska  there  are  about  two 
months  when  the  sun  does  not  set  at  night.  The  midnight 
sun  comes  before  the  snow  is  entirely  gone  from  the 
prairie  and  the  snow  does  not  come  back  until  long  after 
the  sun  has  begun  to  set  at  night.  At  Flaxman  Island 
where  we  had  the  ice-filled  ocean  outside  of  us  and  about 
three  miles  of  cold  water  between  us  and  the  mainland, 
the  weather  never  became  very  hot,  but  some  parties  who 
went  inland  reported  that  up  towards  the  mountains  it 
was  on  an  average  more  than  twenty  degrees  warmer 
than  we  had  it  on  the  island.  This  meant  that  when  we 
were  just  comfortable  at  Flaxman  Island  at  a  temperature 
of  550  or  65 °,  people  in  towards  the  mountains  were 
sweltering  at  from  75  °  to  85  °,  which  is  very  hot  indeed  up 
there,  for  the  air  is  about  as  humid  as  air  can  be,  and 
there  is  little  relief  from  the  heat  at  night  for  the  sun 
does  not  set. 

With  the  increasing  heat  came  swarms  of  mosquitoes. 
We  have  already  described  how  bad  they  are  on  the  Mac- 
kenzie. They  were  not  very  bad  on  Flaxman  Island  be- 
cause we  had  cool  breezes  from  the  sea  continually,  but 
ten  or  fifteen  miles  inland  they  were  just  as  bad  as  they 
are  anywhere  on  the  Mackenzie  River  or  as  they  are  any- 
where in  the  world. 

Besides  mosquitoes,  there  are  many  other  kinds  of  fly- 


200        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

ing  insects — bumblebees,  butterflies,  dragonflies,  horse- 
flies, blue-bottles,  and  the  like.  There  are  also  many 
kinds  of  beetles,  worms  and  other  crawling  things.  This 
rich  insect  life  corresponds  to  the  rich  vegetation  of  the 
prairie.  It  seems  to  me  that  in  most  places,  prairie  is 
the  best  general  name  for  the  arctic  grasslands,  but  in 
many  places  you  would  speak  of  them  rather  as  meadow. 
There  are  also  patches  here  and  there  where  mosses  and 
lichens  prevail,  so  that  the  name  of  neither  prairie  nor 
meadow  fits  exactly.  I  never  speak  of  "tundra,"  for  that 
word  is  misleading  because  it  conveys  a  sense  of  barren- 
ness to  the  average  reader.  In  many  places  there  are 
acres  and  acres  where  flowers  of  one  kind  or  another  form 
a  veritable  carpet.  There  are  not  likely  to  be  in  any 
given  locality  more  than  a  hundred  or  so  different  kinds 
of  flowering  plants,  but  the  individual  flowering  plants 
are  numerous  and  the  flowers  are  brilliant  in  color. 

It  was  not  till  June  that  it  began  to  rain  to  any  con- 
siderable extent.  That  summer  we  had  only  one  heavy 
thunder  shower. 

Our  plans  had  been  made  to  leave  the  country  this  year 
and  Captain  Mikkelsen  decided  we  would  go  out  by  way 
of  Point  Barrow.  On  the  14th  of  July  we  started  west 
along  the  coast  in  two  boats,  a  wooden  sailing  boat  be- 
longing to  the  Duchess  and  an  umiak  belonging  to  a  local 
Eskimo. 

I  1  it  a  delightful  adventure  sailing  along  an  un- 

known coast  with  a  fair  wind,  by  the  lir',ht  of  the  mid- 
night sun.  Occasionally  we  came  to  Eskimo  encamp- 
ments and  frequently  we  went  ashore  to  hunt  geese,  eider 
ducks  or  other  birds.  We  saw  no  caribou  and  the  Eski- 
mos told  us  they  were  not  likely  to  be  found  near  the 
coast  at  this  time  of  year.    It  is  a  belief  common  among 


SPRING  JOURNEY  IN  A  SKIN  BOAT         201 

those  who  write  about  caribou  that  in  the  spring  and 
early  summer  they  come  down  to  the  sea  to  avoid  the  mos- 
quitoes. This  is  a  complete  misunderstanding,  so  far  as 
my  observation  goes.  If  they  do  come  down  to  the  coast, 
it  is  usually  in  the  early  spring,  a  month  or  two  before 
the  mosquitoes  arrive.  During  the  height  of  the  mosquito 
season,  as  the  Eskimos  told  us,  it  is  only  rarely  that  bands 
come  to  the  coast  and  you  usually  have  to  go  thirty  or 
forty  miles  inland  before  you  find  caribou  in  any  numbers. 
In  September  after  the  mosquitoes  are  gone  you  are  far 
more  likely  to  find  them  near  the  sea.  It  appears,  then, 
that  the  caribou  do  not  come  to  the  ocean  because  of  the 
mosquitoes  and  that  their  movements  are  determined  by 
entirely  other  causes — probably  the  lack  of  preferred 
foods,  the  change  in  the  palatability  of  certain  grasses  as 
they  become  ripe  in  autumn,  or  by  the  direction  of  the 
wind.    Caribou  usually  travel  against  the  wind. 

We  had  proceeded  without  incident  as  far  west  as  the 
eastern  edge  of  the  Colville  delta  when  an  accident  hap- 
pened that  changed  all  our  plans.  Storkerson  was  playing 
with  a  rifle  and  shot  himself  through  the  foot.  After 
preliminary  attention  to  the  wound,  Dr.  Howe  gave  it  as 
his  opinion  that  Storkerson  should  be  taken  back  to  Flax- 
man  Island  immediately,  for  he  thought  that  trouble  with 
the  wound  might  develop  and  that  an  operation  might 
be  necessary.  He  had  taken  with  him  an  emergency  kit 
but  had  left  behind  at  Flaxman  Island  his  anesthetics  and 
many  of  his  instruments,  and  did  not  feel  that  he  could 
attend  to  Storkerson  properly  elsewhere.  To  make  this 
decision  was  no  great  hardship  for  most  of  us,  for  it  meant 
only  that  we  would  go  by  whaler  from  Flaxman  Island  to 
Point  Barrow  to  reach  the  revenue  cutter  instead  of  get- 
ting there  a  few  weeks  earlier  by  means  of  small  boats. 


202        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

I  don't  think  any  of  the  men  worried  much  about  the 
accident  except  insofar  as  they  were  sorry  for  Storkerson. 
As  for  me,  I  was  delighted  with  one  aspect  of  the  situa- 
tion, for  the  Eskimos  had  told  me  that  in  prehistoric 
times  (before  the  memory  of  the  fathers  of  the  old  men 
living)  there  had  been  a  big  Eskimo  settlement  on  one 
of  the  Jones  Islands  which  lay  in  a  row  parallel  to  the 
coast  a  few  miles  offshore  from  where  the  accident  oc- 
curred. This  island  was  a  little  bigger  than  Flaxman. 
I  say  was,  designedly;  for  it  and  all  the  other  islands  are 
growing  smaller  year  by  year;  It  seems  the  north  coast 
of  Alaska  is  sinking  gradually.  So  long  as  the  sea  ice 
remains  in  winter  and  spring,  nothing  happens  to  the  in- 
jury of  the  islands.  But  when  the  ice  goes  away,  as  it 
does  nearly  every  summer,  and  when  a  gale  comes  from 
the  open  sea,  the  waves  will  undermine  the  cliffs  of  the 
islands  at  a  great  rate,  so  that  the  coastline  sometimes 
recedes  as  much  as  a  hundred  yards  in  a  single  summer. 
When  the  early  whalers  came  to  the  north  coast  of 
Alaska,  Flaxman  Island  was  probably  some  eight  or  ten 
miles  long.  It  is  now  no  more  than  half  that  long  and 
than  half  as  wide  as  it  used  to  be.  The  Eskimos  said 
that  similarly  the  ocean  was  rapidly  cutting  away  the 
sites  of  the  villages  on  the  Jones  Islands  and  that  all  sorts 
of  ancient  implements  and  other  relics  were  being  washed 
away  by  the  sea. 

It  was,  accordingly,  decided  that  while  Storkerson  and 
the  rest  of  the  party  returned  as  fast  as  they  could  to 
Flaxman  Island,  I  should  remain  on  the  Jones  Islands 
with  an  Eskimo  companion  and  a  sailor,  investigating 
these  ancient  ruins  until  a  whaling  ship  came  along  to 
pick  us  up. 

'1  he  island  containing  the  house  ruins  was  a  low,  roll- 


SPRING  JOURNEY  IN  A  SKIN  BOAT         203 

ing  prairie  similar  to  Flaxman  Island.  There  was  a  great 
abundance  of  driftwood  on  the  north  coast  and  we  erected 
a  comfortable  camp  near  the  ruins.  As  I  had  been  told, 
the  sea  was  cutting  this  island  and  it  appeared  as  if  half 
the  village  site  wras  already  gone.  I  found  awash  on  the 
beach  a  number  of  carvings  of  bone  and  ivory  and  a 
number  of  weapons  and  implements  of  bone  and  wood. 
These  differed  in  some  respects  but  not  fundamentally 
from  those  that  were  in  use  by  the  Eskimos  when  the 
whites  first  came  to  the  country.  The  houses  had  all 
fallen  and  looked  superficially  merely  like  so  many 
mounds.  I  found  on  investigation  that  the  ground  plan 
had  been  similar  to  that  of  the  houses  now  in  use  along 
the  coast.  In  my  opinion  this  village  was  inhabited  no 
more  than  two  or  three  centuries  ago. 

I  was  enjoying  myself  thoroughly,  both  because  I  was 
discovering  things  of  scientific  interest  and  because  I  was 
having  a  good  time  hunting  and  merely  living  in  this 
delightful  place.  It  was  rather  a  disappointment  for  me 
than  otherwise  when  on  the  25th  of  July  the  first  of  the 
whaling  ships  came  in  sight  from  the  west.  We  struck 
camp  hurriedly,  loaded  our  gear  and  our  trophies  into  the 
boat  and  paddled  out  to  meet  the  ship.  It  turned  out  to 
be  the  steam  whaler  Belvedere,  owned  at  San  Francisco 
but  under  command  of  Captain  Stephen  F.  Cottle  of  Mas- 
sachusetts (Martha's  Vineyard,  I  think).  Mrs.  Cottle 
was  with  him.  They  received  me  hospitably  and  gave  me 
fruits  and  vegetables  and  various  civilized  foods  for  which 
I  had  been  hankering  greatly. 

My  c  perience  since  has  shown  that  when  you  have 
been  without  potatoes  and  apples  for  a  year  you  are  so 
hungry  for  them  that  a  boiled  potato  makes  a  banquet 
and  an  apple  is  delicious  beyond  your  vocabulary  to  ex- 


204        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

press.  But  when  you  have  been  without  these  things  for 
five  or  six  years,  as  happened  to  me  later,  you  not  only 
cease  to  long  for  them  but  actually  find  them  much  less 
pleasant  when  you  first  come  back  to  them  than  you 
would  if  you  had  been  eating  them  every  day.  If  you 
went  without  fruits  and  vegetables  for  ten  years  at  a  time, 
you  might  imagine  for  the  whole  ten  years  that  you  were 
longing  for  them.  But  if,  like  me,  you  first  go  without 
them  for  a  year  and  later  for  two  years  and  eventually 
for  five  years,  you  find  that  a  total  of  ten  years  is  ample 
to  cure  you  of  all  your  hankering.  It  goes  even  farther 
than  that.  I  used  to  be  almost  a  vegetarian  by  taste.  At 
the  end  of  ten  years  in  the  polar  regions  I  much  preferred 
a  meal  where  both  fruits  and  vegetables  were  completely 
absent  and  meat  the  only  food. 

We  sailed  pleasantly  with  the  Belvedere  to  Flaxman 
Island  where  we  took  aboard  Captain  Mikkelsen.  We 
then  continued  to  Herschel  Island  where  we  arrived  July 
27th,  which  was  up  to  that  time  the  earliest  date  that  a 
ship  had  ever  arrived  there  from  the  "outside  world." 


CHAPTER  XVII 

A  RACE  OVER  THE  ARCTIC  MOUNTAINS  IN  SUMMER 

When  we  got  to  Herschel  Island  we  heard  news  that 
worried  both  Captain  Mikkelsen  and  me,  although  for 
different  reasons.  I  have  mentioned  in  the  preceding 
chapter  that  after  first  getting  to  Flaxman  Island  I  made 
a  hurried  trip  back  to  Herschel  Island  for  a  conference 
with  Captain  Leavitt.  At  that  time  I  had  said  to  the 
captain  and  to  some  of  his  officers  that  the  Eskimos 
around  Flaxman  Island  believed  the  ice  exploratory  party 
— Leffingwell,  Mikkelsen  and  Storkerson — to  have  lost 
their  lives.  We  had  discussed  this  a  good  deal.  Captain 
Leavitt  had  inclined  to  the  view  that  the  ice  party  were 
safe  but  most  of  his  officers  and  all  the  Herschel  Island 
Eskimos  had  agreed  with  the  Flaxman  Island  Eskimos 
that  they  were  undoubtedly  dead.  During  the  spring 
several  boats  had  gone  from  Herschel  up  to  Macpherson 
to  meet  the  Mackenzie  River  steamer,  Wrigley.  These 
people  had  paid  no  attention  to  Captain  Leavitt's  minor- 
ity view  that  the  ice  party  were  safe  and  had  reported 
the  death  of  Leffingwell,  Mikkelsen  and  Storkerson.  The 
Wrigley  had  left  Macpherson  about  the  middle  of  July, 
carrying  the  news  of  the  supposed  tragedy.  The  bearers 
of  this  report  would  arrive  at  the  telegraph  station  at 
Athabasca  Landing  probably  between  the  5th  and  10th 
of  September,  and  the  news  of  another  polar  tragedy 
would  be  flashed  to  the  world.  When  sent  out  this  news 
would  have  the  weight  of  the  authority  of  Mr.  Harrison, 
who  was  one  of  the  outbound  passengers  and  who  was 

205 


206        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

said  to  have  been  as  convinced  as  the  rest  at  Macpherson 
that  the  ice  party  had  lost  their  lives. 

What  concerned  me  particularly  in  this  situation  was 
that  the  story  would  be  published  on  my  authority,  it 
having  been  said  at  Macpherson  that  I  had  brought  to 
Herschel  Island  the  news  of  the  death  of  the  three  men. 
What  worried  Captain  Mikkelsen  especially  was  that  he 
had  an  invalid  mother  who  he  feared  might  possibly  die 
of  the  shock  of  reading  in  the  morning  paper  the  definite 
announcement  of  the  death  of  her  son.  Captain  Mikkel- 
sen felt  almost  equal  concern  about  the  parents  of  Mr. 
Leffingwell  and  about  several  other  near  relatives  of  the 
three  reported  dead. 

Captain  Mikkelsen  took  counsel  with  the  whaling  cap- 
tains in  the  harbor  and  with  the  police  at  the  barracks 
but  was  told  that  there  was  little  chance  of  overtaking 
this  bad  news.  A  pursuit  up  the  Mackenzie  under  a 
month's  handicap  was  unthinkable.  The  alternative  was 
a  journey  over  the  mountains  to  the  United  States  Gov- 
ernment wireless  station  at  Eagle  City.  If  this  were  tried 
failure  was  considered  probable  by  some  and  certain  by 
others. 

Previous  to  this  Captain  Mikkelsen  and  I  had  talked 
a  good  deal  about  the  possibility  of  my  remaining  with 
him  another  year  to  continue  the  exploration  north  of 
Alaska.  I  had  considered  still  more  definitely  the  pos- 
sibility of  staying  with  Leffingwell  and  helping  him  with 
his  geological  survey  of  the  Endicott  Mountains  to  the 
south  of  Flaxman  Island.  Had  Leffingwell  and  Mik- 
kelsen been  able  to  agree  on  cooperating  at  either  of 
these  enterprises,  I  should  doubtless  have  stayed  with 
them.  But  as  one  had  his  heart  set  on  the  mountains 
!  the  other  on  the  sea  ice  I  could  not  please  one  with- 


OVER  THE  ARCTIC  MOUNTAINS  207 

out  displeasing  the  other,  so  I  thought  it  better  on  the 
whole  to  sever  my  connections  with  their  expedition  and 
to  try  to  organize  one  of  my  own  the  following  year. 
My  heart  was  neither  in  the  mountains  nor  on  the  sea 
ice  but  rather  in  the  mystery  of  the  strange  people  with 
blond  faces  and  copper  weapons  whom  Klinkenberg  had 
reported  from  Victoria  Island. 

Captain  Mikkelsen  may  have  realized  already  that  I 
would  probably  not  accept  his  offer  to  stay  and  help  him 
another  year  with  exploring,  or  it  may  have  been  that  in 
his  anxiety  for  his  mother  and  for  the  relatives  and 
friends  of  Leffingwell  and  Storkerson  he  had  forgotten 
temporarily  the  plans  he  had  been  discussing  with  me. 
At  any  rate,  he  came  to  me  and  with  no  reference  to 
what  might  be  done  in  the  North  if  I  stayed  another 
year,  he  asked  if  I  would  undertake  the  forlorn  hope  of 
outspeeding  the  bad  news  now  on  its  way  up  the  Mac- 
kenzie by  journeying  south  across  the  mountains  to  the 
Yukon  with  the  hope  of  getting  to  the  wireless  station  at 
Eagle  City  before  Harrison  got  to  the  regular  telegraph  at 
Athabasca  Landing.  He  said  this  would  have  to  be  done 
by  me  or  no  one,  for  I  had  greater  experience  in  over- 
land travel  than  any  one  else  at  Herschel  Island.  Fur- 
thermore, all  of  the  others  were  in  such  circumstances 
that  they  could  not  very  well  consider  going.  Mikkelsen 
could  rot  try  it  himself,  for  he  would  have  to  return  to 
Flaxm^n  Island  to  close  up  the  affairs  of  the  expedition. 
It  was  now  the  plan  that  all  of  the  expedition  except 
Leffingwell  would  take  passage  west  with  an  outgoing 
whaler  in  September,  connecting  with  the  United  States 
revenue  cutter  at  Point  Barrow,  or  possibly  in  Nome  or 
Unalaska.  Leffingwell  alone  would  remain  at  Flaxman 
Island  for  the  purpose  of  his  geological  studies. 


208        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

It  took  me  but  a  few  minutes  to  decide  to  try  it.  The 
decision  once  made  there  was  no  time  to  be  lost.  A 
whaleboat  belonging  to  the  Mounted  Police  and  manned 
by  a  crew  of  three  Macpherson  Indians  was  now  in  the 
Herschel  Island  harbor.  The  police  had  intended  to  send 
the  boat  to  Macpherson  in  a  few  days  anyway,  and  now 
they  said  it  might  as  well  start  in  a  few  hours.  It  did 
not  take  us  even  a  few  hours  to  get  ready;  we  were 
under  sail  inside  of  two  hours,  speeding  eastward  with 
a  fair  wind. 

A  whaleboat  sails  beautifully  when  well  handled  and 
one  of  the  Indians  was  a  fair  boatman.  The  breeze 
slackened  gradually,  however,  and  it  took  us  eighteen 
hours  to  reach  King  Point,  a  distance  of  thirty-five  miles. 
I  was  for  taking  turns  sleeping  on  the  boat  and  keeping 
on  but  the  Indians  pretended  to  know  that  by  mid- 
forenoon  there  would  be  a  fair  breeze.  Accordingly,  we 
camped  beside  the  wreck  of  the  Bonanza  shortly  after 
midnight  and  slept  till  nine  o'clock. 

I  had  felt  sure  when  we  went  into  camp  that  the  Indian 
forecast  of  a  breeze  was  based  on  nothing  more  substan- 
tial than  the  desire  to  sleep  soundly  on  shore.  But  a 
breeze  did  come  and  with  it  we  made  the  mouth  of  the 
Mackenzie  and  got  some  distance  up  stream.  After  this 
the  Indians  worked  as  hard  as  any  one  could  desire.  We 
were  lucky  in  having  a  sailing  wind  fully  half  the  time. 
When  it  dropped  calm  or  when  there  was  a  head  wind 
we  got  out  our  tracking  line.  One  man  remained  in  the 
boat  to  steer  it  and  the  other  three  of  us  walked  along 
the  river  bank,  pulling  on  the  tracking  line.  Thus 
alternately  sailing  and  tracking  we  reached  Macpherson 
August  1 2th,  breaking  the  record  in  summer  travel  from 
Herschel  Island  to  Fort  Macpherson.    We  had  made  the 


We  Sailed  Up  the  Mackenzie  Delta  to  Macpherson 


Porcupine  River  in  Early  Spring 


OVER  THE  ARCTIC  MOUNTAINS  209 

two  hundred  and  fifty  miles  in  a  few  hours  over  three 
days,  which  was  about  two  days  better  time  than  any 
one  else  was  known  to  have  made. 

At  Herschel  Island  I  had  considered  the  possibility  of 
walking  straight  south  over  the  mountains  and  I  should 
have  tried  this  had  there  been  any  natives  available  to 
go  with  me.  I  am  writing  this  story,  from  memory  and 
notes,  fifteen  years  later  and  with  ten  years  of  arctic 
experience  to  my  advantage.  It  now  seems  silly  to  me 
that  I  did  not  go  straight  south  from  Herschel  Island 
over  the  mountains  alone.  With  nothing  heavier  to  carry 
than  a  message,  a  man  needs  no  companion  for  a 
journey  of  one  or  two  hundred  miles  through  uninhabited 
country.  Those  are  my  ideas  now,  but  I  did  not  have 
them  then  nor  did  it  seem  to  occur  to  any  one  who  was 
then  at  Herschel  Island  that  a  man  unaccompanied  could 
safely  make  such  a  journey. 

I  had  decided  to  go  by  way  of  Macpherson  because 
the  police  had  assured  me  that  I  would  have  no  trouble 
in  getting  Indians  to  help  me  across  the  mountains  from 
there.  I  now  took  the  case  to  Firth  and  he  said  there 
should  not  be  any  great  difficulty  about  it,  although  the 
arrangements  could  have  been  more  easily  made  had  I 
been  there  two  weeks  earlier  while  large  numbers  of 
Indians  were  at  the  Fort  for  their  summer  trading. 
There  were  no  good  men  available  now  and  I  would  have 
to  take  what  I  could  get.  He  thought  it  could  be  man- 
aged somehow. 

It  took  only  a  few  hours  to  negotiate  with  the  Indians 
and  to  make  all  arrangements.  During  that  time  Firth 
gave  me  valuable  information  and  advice.  He  had  him- 
self been  in  that  country  for  more  than  thirty  years,  sta- 
tioned not  always  at  Macpherson  but  sometimes  at  La 


2io        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

Pierre's  House  on  the  Bell  River  to  the  west,  or  at 
Rampart  House  on  the  Porcupine  to  the  southwest.  He 
knew  the  mountains  between  thoroughly.  There  were 
two  ways  open:  One  was  to  get  a  canoe,  go  a  few  miles 
down  the  Peel  River  to  the  mouth  of  the  Rat  River  and 
then  up  the  Rat  about  three  days'  journey,  paddling, 
poling  and  tracking  the  canoe.  We  would  eventually 
come  to  a  portage  over  which  the  canoe  could  be  car- 
ried to  the  Bell  River.  The  men  who  accompanied  me 
would  then  return  on  foot  and  I  would  paddle  the  canoe 
down  the  Bell  and  Porcupine  to  the  Yukon.  But  this 
canoe  route  was  hardly  open  to  me  because  there  were 
no  good  canoes  for  sale  just  now  at  Macpherson.  That 
practically  limited  us  to  the  "portage  route." 

The  portage  route  was  a  footpath  leading  about  eighty 
miles  west  over  the  mountains  to  the  Bell  River.  In  the 
early  days  when  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  had  posts 
on  the  Bell  and  Porcupine  Rivers,  the  freight  to  supply 
these  used  to  come  down  the  Mackenzie  to  Macpherson 
and  was  then  carried  by  porters  over  the  mountains  to 
La  Pierre's  House.  It  was  the  feet  of  these  porters  that 
had  made  the  trail  which  we  were  now  to  follow. 

Firth  told  me  many  interesting  stories  about  the  old 
portaging  days.  The  goods  of  the  Company  used  to  be 
made  into  ninety-pound  packages  each  of  which  was 
known  as  a  "piece."  They  would  employ  no  man  in  the 
portaging  who  could  not  make  eighty  miles  in  four  days 
carrying  in  addition  to  the  ninety-pound  piece  whatever 
he  needed  in  the  w;»y  of  food  and  bedding.  Many  of 
the  men  could  carry  two  pieces  or  180  pounds,  and  Firth 
had  known  thn  four  who  would  carry  three  pieces 

each  and   their   food   for  four  days,  a  rifle,  and  some 
ammunition,  a   frying  pan,  teapot,  and  even  sometimes 


OVER  THE  ARCTIC  MOUNTAINS  211 

something  in  addition.  He  told  me  I  would  have  to 
manage  with  boys  whom  he  could  not  recommend  in  any- 
way and  that  they  would  probably  fail  to  make  the  dis- 
tance in  four  days  unless  their  loads  were  lighter  than 
eighty  pounds. 

The  Indians  eventually  engaged  were  Joseph,  who  was 
over  twenty  years  old,  and  William,  who  was  about 
seventeen.  William  was,  however,  the  bigger  of  the  two. 
When  it  came  to  outfitting,  it  was  they  rather  than  Firth 
or  I  that  insisted  on  heavy  loads.  They  wanted  to  take 
along  so  much  corned  beef  and  so  much  bacon  and  so 
much  of  various  other  things  for  provisions. 

I  found  out  from  Firth  that  the  regular  wages  were 
four  dollars  a  day  for  the  journey  to  the  Bell,  the  In- 
dians receiving  no  pay  on  their  way  back  home.  Think- 
ing that  I  would  get  better  service  by  offering  a  lump 
sum,  I  told  the  Indians  (through  Firth  as  interpreter) 
that  instead  of  paying  them  four  dollars  a  day,  which 
would  give  them  only  twenty  dollars  for  the  trip  if  it 
took  five  days,  I  would  pay  them  thirty-five  dollars  each, 
no  matter  in  how  few  days  we  made  it.  I  also  offered 
a  prize  in  case  we  made  it  in  less  than  the  regular  time. 
The  bargain  seemed  to  please  not  only  the  men  then> 
selves  but  all  their  relatives  who  had  gathered  to  help 
in  the  negotiations. 

August  13th  we  got  away  from  the  Fort  and  were 
ferried  across  the  Peel  River  by  a  boat  belonging  to  Mr. 
Harvey,  a  Free  Trader  who  had  set  up  at  Macpherson 
a  rival  establishment  to  that  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Com- 
pany. Harvey  had  been  no  less  kind  to  me  than  Firth. 
As  the  general  arrangements  for  my  trip  were  in  Firth's 
hands,  Harvey  had  made  up  for  his  lack  of  opportunity 
in  helping  with  the  general  outfitting  by  insisting  on 


212        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

making  me  several  presents.  He  said  I  would  be  sure 
to  find  along  the  road  Indians  who  would  have  to  be  paid 
for  their  services.  There  is  a  certain  type  of  silk  hand- 
kerchief which  at  that  time  passed  practically  for  money, 
and  of  these  Harvey  gave  me  several.  He  also  gave  me 
certain  delicacies  of  food. 

The  police  at  the  barracks  insisted  that  I  must  not 
go  unarmed,  and  gave  me  one  of  their  service  revolvers. 
I  had  left  my  rifle  behind  at  Herschel  with  the  idea  that 
the  journey  would  be  almost  entirely  by  boat  or  raft, 
first  on  the  ocean  and  the  Mackenzie  River  and  later  on 
the  Bell  River  and  Porcupine,  and  that  I  would  not  have 
time  to  stop  along  the  road  to  hunt.  I  did  not,  there- 
fore, really  want  the  revolver,  but  because  I  valued  the 
kind  intentions  of  the  police  in  this  matter  I  took  it.  I 
was  to  return  the  revolver  to  the  head  office  of  the  police 
at  Regina  when  I  got  out. 

Once  across  the  river  our  journey  with  pack  loads 
began.  The  two  Indians  were  carrying  about  eighty 
pounds  each  and  I  was  carrying  about  forty  pounds. 
This  division  of  the  packs  had  been  made  to  conform 
with  Firth's  ideas  of  practicability  and  propriety.  I 
understood  it  was  not  considered  good  form  for  an 
employer  to  carry  as  much  as  his  Indians  did. 

We  had  no  trouble  following  the  path  for  about  five 
miles  when  we  came  to  the  place  where  I  had  said 
good-bye  to  Elihu  Stewart  the  year  before.  Stewart  had 
started  out  from  Macpherson  in  the  evening  and  his 
camping  five  miles  from  the  post  had,  accordingly, 
seemed  to  me  logical.  When  my  Indians  now  insisted 
on  camping  at  the  same  place  I  saw  no  logic  in  it  for  it 
was  not  yet  evening,  but  they  said  that  all  people  who 
went   across    the    mountains    camped    there    and    that, 


OVER  THE  ARCTIC  MOUNTAINS  213 

while  this  counted  regularly  for  one  day  so  far  as  wages 
were  concerned,  it  was  not  counted  when  people  were 
saying  they  could  do  the  eighty-mile  portage  in  four 
days.  They  also  explained  that  on  the  fourth  of  the 
counted  days  we  would  camp  a  few  miles  away  from 
Bell  River  and  make  that  distance  the  next  morning 
without  counting  that  as  a  day  either  except  in  the  pay- 
ment of  wages.  There  would,  accordingly,  be  six  wage 
days  although  we  would  say  that  the  journey  had  been 
made  in  four  days.  All  this  might  have  been  amusing 
had  I  been  on  an  ordinary  journey  but  when  I  was 
racing  with  Harrison  and  his  bad  news  the  idea  did  not 
suit  so  well.  There  was  nothing  to  do  about  it,  how- 
ever, for  the  Indians  reminded  me  that  they  were  still 
near  home  and  if  their  ways  did  not  suit  me  they  could 
easily  go  back  and  I  could  hire  some  other  Indians. 

I  have  learned  it  better  since  but  I  understood  even 
then  that  there  is  nothing  to  do  except  to  make  the  best 
of  this  sort  of  situation.  I  showed  no  hard  feeling  and 
presently  we  were  all  laughing  and  chatting  together.  It 
was  then  that  the  Indians  explained  that  there  was  a 
reason  for  their  camping  here,  for  to-morrow  we  would 
find  no  suitable  camping  place  until  evening.  They  said 
that  if  we  proceeded  now  we  would  be  tired  out  before 
we  could  get  to  a  tolerable  camp  site.  All  this  I  believed 
that  evening  and  it  was  a  good  thing  I  did,  for  it  made 
me  sleep  better.  Next  day  I  discovered  there  was  no 
truth  in  it,  for  there  were  good  camp  sites  along  the  road 
the  whole  day.  Thereupon  the  Indians  owned  up  that 
they  had  not  been  over  this  road  before.  They  said 
they  had  always  understood  there  were  no  good  camping 
places  and  professed  to  regret  having  misinformed  me 
the  day  before. 


214        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

Looking  back  to  it,  this  journey  is  one  of  the  most 
interesting  I  ever  made.  At  the  time  it  was  one  of  the 
most  disagreeable.  I  noticed  the  first  evening  that 
William  did  a  good  deal  of  coughing.  He  spoke  no  Eng- 
lish, but  Joseph  explained  to  me  that  some  weeks  before 
William  had  had  a  hemorrhage  from  the  lungs  and  that 
people  expected  him  to  die  the  next  year  from  tuber- 
culosis. I  could  tell  that  WTilliam  knew  what  Joseph  was 
explaining  to  me.  As  he  seemed  in  no  way  depressed, 
I  wondered  whether  that  was  a  sign  he  did  not  worry 
about  dying  or  whether  it  indicated  that  the  story  was 
a  fabrication.  But  the  more  I  saw  of  William  the  more 
I  believed  that  he  was  seriously  sick  and  that  the  story 
was  true. 

William's  illness  showed  itself  not  only  in  coughing 
but  also  in  weakness  and  in  shortness  of  breath.  The 
next  morning  Joseph  took  twenty  pounds  of  William's 
pack,  so'  that  now  he  had  a  hundred  and  William  only 
about  fifty  pounds.  We  had  not  been  many  miles  on 
the  road  when  it  became  evident  that  a  hundred  pounds 
was^too  much  for  Joseph  to  carry  and  I  took  some  of  it. 
We  agreed  that  William's  share  of  the  load  should  be 
the  heaviest  food,  such  as  the  corned  beef,  and  we  ate 
four  times  a  day  hugely.  This  lightened  his  load  so 
rapidly  that  by  the  third  day  he  had  scarcely  anything 
in  his  pack  although  Joseph  and  I  were  still  carrying 
moderate  loads. 

Wiun  we  left  Macpherson  the  mosquitoes  had  been 
bad  in  the  lowland  but  as  we  got  higher  into  the  moun- 
tains they  ceased  to  bother  us  much.  Had  the  journey 
been  made  a  month  earlier  the  reverse  would  have  been 
true,  for  in  no  place  are  mosquitoes  less  tolerable  than 
above  the  treeline  in  arctic  mountains.    The  season  had 


OVER  THE  ARCTIC  MOUNTAINS  215 

advanced  enough  so  that  we  now  had  severe  frosts  at 
night  which  had  a  quieting  effect  on  the  insect  world, 
although  the  temperature  in  the  daytime  still  rose  to 
about  80  °. 

The  first  day  and  a  part  of  the  second  the  road  led 
mainly  through  a  spruce  forest;  then  we  began  to  cross 
ridges  covered  with  grass.  This  was  my  first  real  ex- 
perience with  the  "nigger  heads"  that  are  described  by 
so  many  travelers  who  have  dealt  with  the  northern  part 
of  the  American  mainland.  Essentially  the  ground  is 
covered  with  hummocks,  varying  between  the  size  of  an 
orange  and  that  of  a  man's  head,  or  sometimes  larger. 
These  hummocks  are  really  shaped  like  mushrooms. 
There  is  a  wobbly  head  to  them,  covered  with  vegeta- 
tion, and  between  are  deep  crevices.  You  try  to  step 
from  the  middle  of  one  hummock  to  the  middle  of 
another  and  about  once  in  three  times  your  foot  slips  off 
and  you  go  halfway  to  the  knee  in  mud.  I  know  no 
experience  more  heartbreaking  than  the  struggle  towards 
the  evening  of  a  long  day  if  you  are  carrying  sixty  or 
eighty  pounds. 

Were  it  not  for  my  great  respect  for  Firth's  general 
veracity  I  should  doubt  whether  any  Indians  or  other 
human  beings  could  carry  loads  of  three  hundred  pounds 
across  such  country  at  the  rate  of  twenty  miles  a  day. 
It  was  all  I  could  do  to  carry  eighty  pounds  twenty 
miles.  I  judge  from  my  later  experience,  however,  that 
part  of  my  trouble  was  due  to  inexperience  in  handling 
a  back  load. 

The  third  day  from  Macpherson  we  crossed  the  ridge 
of  the  mountains.  I  do  not  know  how  high  above  sea 
level  this  took  us — probably  not  over  two  or  three  thou- 
sand feet.    Still,  we  were  above  the  treeline.    There  was 


216        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

even  some  snow  from  last  year  in  small  banks  in  the  lee 
of  steep  cliffs.  The  Indians  said,  however,  that  this 
snow  would  all  be  gone  in  two  or  three  weeks  and  that 
there  would  be  a  month  or  so  between  its  disappearance 
and  the  coming  of  the  next  winter.  I  judge  that  a  moun- 
tain in  this  vicinity  would  have  to  be  six  or  seven  thou- 
sand feet  high  to  be  cold  enough  for  any  snow  to  remain 
permanently. 

The  evening  after  crossing  the  divide  we  had  a  de- 
lightful camp  site  in  a  grove  of  tall  spruces  by  a  small 
river  that  flowed  west  towards  the  Bell.    We  were  high 
enough  up  so  that  it  was  cold  towards  morning  and  when 
we  awoke  there  was  hoar  frost  on  the  grass.     Before 
leaving  our  camp  we  had  a  discussion  as  to  where  we 
should  strike  for  the  Bell.    The  Indians  said  the  nearest 
way  would  be  to  go  directly  towards  the  site  of  La 
Pierre's  House  but  that  the  trees  in  that  locality  would 
be  too  small  for  building  the  raft  on  which  I  wanted  to 
travel  down  the  river.    I  should  have  liked  to  see  the 
ruins  of  this  mountain  outpost  of   the  Hudson's  Bay 
Company,  but  the  main  consideration  was  to  try  to  reach 
a  telegraph  station  ahead  of  Harrison's  bad  news  and  I 
could  not  afford  time  for  sightseeing.    I  told  the  Indians, 
therefore,  to  head  as  nearly  as  they  could  for  the  nearest 
point  on  the  Bell  where  there  were  trees  large  enough 
for  a  raft.     I  think  that  had  we  gone  to  La  Pierre's  House 
we  might  have  followed  the  little  branch  river  at  which 
we  had  been  camped,  but  now  we  had  to  climb  out  of  its 
valley  and  march  all  day  at  an  angle  to  the  streams,  so 
that  we  had  to  cross  several  small  rivers  and  climb  a 
good  many  hills.    We  did  not  quite  make  the  Bell  that 
day,  but  the  Indians  said  it  was  not  far. 

The  next  morning  we  got  to  the  Bell  after  a  march  of 


OVER  THE  ARCTIC  MOUNTAINS  217 

two  or  three  hours.  I  was  eager  to  start  at  once  building 
a  raft  but  the  Indians  were  slow  about  it.  I  had  noticed 
the  previous  evening  that  they  had  been  less  cheerful 
than  usual  and  this  morning  they  had  been  sulky.  On 
arrival  at  the  Bell  River  they  sat  down  and  acted  as  if 
they  did  not  know  if  they  would  ever  stand  up  again. 
When  I  asked  them  what  the  trouble  was  they  said  they 
were  feeling  injured  about  not  getting  the  same  wages 
as  all  other  packers.  Ever  since  the  gold  rush  (1897-99) 
there  had  been  a  standard  wage  for  this  sort  of  work. 
Their  fathers  and  uncles  and  all  their  friends  always 
used  to  get  four  dollars  a  day,  and  why  could  they  not 
get  four  dollars  a  day?  I  reminded  them  that  the  wages 
I  offered  them  had  been  satisfactory  when  we  talked  it 
over  with  Firth  and  pointed  out  in  addition  that  they 
were  getting  thirty-five  dollars  for  the  trip  which  would 
be  more  than  four  dollars  a  day.  They  expressed  them- 
selves as  very  doubtful  as  to  whether  thirty-five  dollars 
was  more  than  four  dollars  a  day  and  said  that,  as  they 
had  worked  hard  for  me  and  faithfully,  they  did  not  see 
why  they  should  not  get  the  same  wages  as  everybody 
else. 

We  haggled  about  this  for  an  hour  but  I  was  unable 
to  make  it  clear  to  them  that  thirty-five  dollars  is  more 
than  four  dollars  a  day  for  six  days.  Accordingly,  I 
agreed  that  I  would  pay  them  four  dollars  a  day.  The 
arrangement  had  been  that  I  would  give  the  Indians  a 
letter  to  take  back  to  Firth,  certifying  that  they  had 
performed  their  task  properly,  whereupon  he  was  to  give 
each  of  them  thirty-five  dollars.  I  now  wrote  Firth, 
explaining  that  they  were  dissatisfied  with  thirty-five 
dollars  and  wanted  instead  four  dollars  a  day.    I  said 


2x8        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

he  was  to  use  his  judgment  whether  to  take  them  at  their 
word  or  whether  to  give  them  the  larger  amount. 

As  soon  as  I  had  written  this  letter  and  translated  it 
to  Joseph,  both  Indians  became  cheerful  and  commenced 
at  once  chopping  down  trees  to  make  the  raft. 

[When  I  was  on  my  way  north  on  my  second  expedi- 
tion (1908)  I  saw  Firth  again  and  asked  him  what  had 
happened  to  the  wages  of  the  Indians.  He  said  that 
when  they  had  come  back  he  had  received  news  of  it 
right  away  and  had  expected  them  to  come  that  same 
day  to  get  their  wages.  They  did  not  come,  however, 
until  the  next  day  and  were  then  accompanied  by  a  large 
number  of  their  relatives  and  friends.  When  they 
handed  him  my  letter  and  he  read  it  over,  he  asked 
whether  it  was  correct  that  they  preferred  four  dollars 
a  day,  whereupon  not  only  they  but  also  their  relatives 
spoke  up  and  said  that  it  was  only  fair.  Everybody  else 
had  been  getting  four  dollars  a  day  for  years  and  they 
did  not  see  why  these  young  men  should  not  get  the 
same  wage.  Thereupon  Firth  paid  each  of  them  twenty- 
four  dollars  and  they  went  home  well  satisfied.  This 
left  him  twenty-two  dollars  to  refund  to  me.] 

Although  the  Indians  and  I  worked  hard  at  the  mak- 
ing of  the  raft,  it  took  all  the  rest  of  the  day.  For 
making  the  raft  we  had  brought  along  a  sharp  new  ax 
and  several  hundred  feet  of  strong  but  slender  rope. 
The  logs  we  used  were  about  twenty  feet  long,  about  a 
foot  in  diameter  at  the  big  end  and  four  inches  at  the 
small  end.  To  make  a  good  buoyant  raft  we  should  have 
had  dry  logs,  but  others  had  built  their  rafts  in  this 
locality  ahead  of  us  and,  although  we  went  as  much  as 
half  a  mile  afield,  we  got  only  enough  dry  wood  to  make 
half  of  the  raft.    The  rest,  then,  had  to  be  green. 


OVER  THE  ARCTIC  MOUNTAINS  219 

When  all  was  done  I  had  a  raft  twenty  feet  long,  about 
ten  feet  wide  at  the  big  end  and  six  feet  wide  at  the 
small  end.  On  the  middle  of  this  raft  we  made  a  fire- 
place of  stones  so  that  I  could  cook  meals  without  losing 
any  time  in  landing.  Firth  had  told  me  that  there  were 
few  rapids  in  the  river  and  none  dangerous.  It  was  my 
intention,  accordingly,  to  sleep  on  the  raft  and  travel 
both  day  and  night. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

ON  A  RAFT  DOWN  THE  PORCUPINE  RIVER 

The  morning  of  August  19th  my  Indians  turned  towards 
Macpherson  and  I  began  my  long  drift  alone  down  the 
Bell  and  Porcupine  Rivers.  I  did  not  then  realize  how 
long  it  was  to  be,  for  this  was  my  first  journey  at  the 
mercy  of  a  river  current.  By  the  map  and  as  the  crow 
flies  the  distance  did  not  seem  so  formidable.  But  the 
Bell  is  one  of  the  slowest  of  rivers,  flowing  through  the 
most  crooked  of  valleys,  so  that  my  estimate  of  the  dis- 
tance was  multiplied  by  two  and  my  hope  of  speed  cut 
down  by  at  least  half.  Under  ordinary  circumstances 
I  think  I  might  have  enjoyed  the  lackadaisical  Bell  but 
now  I  was  in  a  race.  I  estimated  that  by  this  time  the 
bad  news  would  be  somewhere  on  the  Slave  River  be- 
tween Great  Slave  Lake  and  Athabasca  Lake.  To  be 
sure  of  winning  I  had  to  get  to  a  telegraph  office  by  the 
first  of  September.  If  I  were  much  later  than  that, 
nothing  but  some  bad  luck  to  Harrison  could  give  me 
the  good  luck  of  winning. 

The  current  varied  a  great  deal.  Once  or  twice  a  day 
it  cheered  me  up  for  a  while  by  speeding  along  at  three 
miles  an  hour.  But  much  of  the  time  it  was  only  half 
a  mile  an  hour  and  I  think  the  average  was  somewhere 
between  a  mile  and  a  mile  and  a  half.  Traveling 
twenty- four  hours  a  day  1  would  be  making  at  the  most 
thirty-six  miles,  and  thirty-six  miles  by  the  river  would 
be  no  more  than  twenty  miles  in  a  straight  line.     By 

220 


DOWN  THE  PORCUPINE  RIVER  221 

what  Firth  had  told  me  it  was  less  than  three  hundred 
miles  to  Rampart  House,  but  he  was  referring  to  the 
sledge  trails  which  do  not  follow  the  river  and  are  much 
shorter.  I  had  been  told  that  at  Rampart  House  I  would 
be  sure  to  find  Indians  whom  I  could  hire  with  their 
canoes  to  paddle  me  rapidly  the  remaining  two  hundred 
miles  to  the  Yukon. 

My  Indians  had  said  there  was  a  possibility  that  I 
might  fall  in  with  some  fishing  Indians  or  some  moose 
hunters  almost  any  time.  If  fishing,  they  would  be 
camping  beside  the  river,  but  if  hunting  moose  they 
might  be  some  distance  back.  They  told  me  to  watch 
carefully  for  smoke  inland,  for  if  Indians  have  the  luck 
to  kill  a  big  moose,  and  more  especially  if  they  kill  two 
or  three,  they  will  camp  by  the  kill  to  smoke-dry  the 
meat.  They  had  also  told  me  that  at  this  season  of 
year  I  might  find  some  bad  rapids  in  the  river  and  had 
warned  me  to  be  careful. 

With  these  two  ideas  of  moose-hunting  Indians  and 
possible  rapids  in  my  head  I  found  excitement  in  round- 
ing each  curve  in  the  river,  for  the  next  stretch  held  the 
promise  of  an  Indian  smoke  and  the  threat  of  a  rapid. 
These  uncertainties  helped  wonderfully  to  pass  the  time, 
but  occasionally  I  would  get  into  a  placid  stretch  where 
I  could  see  the  river  below  me  for  a  mile  or  two  ahead 
and  where  the  current  was  only  half  a  mile  an  hour. 
These  were  undeniably  tedious  spells,  even  if  they  gave 
me  the  best  possible  chance  to  study  the  scenery. 

Although  I  was  still  a  hundred  miles  north  of  the  arctic 
circle,  I  found  the  scenery  here  not  very  different  from 
that  of  the  Athabasca  River,  a  thousand  miles  farther 
south.  I  suppose  the  trees  along  the  Athabasca  must  be 
stouter  and  taller  but  as  you  travel  along  the  river  you 


222        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

do  not  notice  that,  and  here  as  there  are  the  forest-clad 
hills  rolling  away  into  the  distance.  On  the  Athabasca 
there  are  no  mountains  in  sight  and  on  the  Bell  when 
I  looked  at  right  angles  to  the  river's  course  I  saw  no 
mountains,  but  whenever  a  long  vista  opened  either  ahead 
or  behind  I  was  likely  to  see  mountains  in  the  distance. 
None  of  them  was  snow-covered  but  their  tops  were 
bare  of  trees,  for  the  forest  went  only  a  third  of  the  way 
or  half  the  way  up  their  slopes.  The  highest  of  the 
peaks  would  be  under  ten  thousand  feet. 

The  down-river  journey  was  monotonous  but  every 
day  something  happened  to  vary  the  monotony  a  little. 
One  day  a  moose  was  standing  on  the  river  bank  as  I 
drifted  around  a  bend.  I  sat  motionless  on  my  raft 
wondering  how  near  I  would  pass,  for  the  raft  was  at 
the  mercy  of  the  current  and  was  carried  sometimes 
along  one  bank  and  sometimes  along  the  other.  The 
river  here  was  about  two  or  three  hundred  yards  wide. 
When  I  was  still  several  hundred  yards  above  the  moose 
he  noticed  my  raft  and  began  to  watch  it  carefully.  It 
is  the  nature  of  animals  that  they  do  not  recognize  a 
man  as  long  as  he  makes  no  movement,  and  apparently 
the  moose  took  my  craft  and  me  for  half  a  dozen  tangled 
spruce  trees  drifting  together.  Still,  it  must  have  seemed 
to  him  that  there  was  something  peculiar,  for  when  we 
got  abreast  he  suddenly  plunged  into  the  river  and  came 
swimming  towards  me.  He  came  within  eight  or  ten  feet 
and  then  started  to  swim  around  me  on  the  downstream 
side.  There  was  no  noticeable  wind  but  I  suppose  the 
air  must  have  been  moving  downstream,  for  when  he 
got  in  front  of  the  raft  he  was  scared  by  something, 
turned  around  suddenly  and  swam  back  to  shore.  He 
was  not  badly  frightened  for  he  stopped  on  landing  to 


DOWN  THE  PORCUPINE  RIVER  223 

look  back.  Then  he  walked  into  the  forest  and  disap- 
peared. 

But  for  this  meeting  with  the  moose  I  should  have  had 
no  chance  to  kill  game  with  my  revolver  so  long  as  I 
was  on  the  river.  This  chance  I  did  not  take  for  I 
considered  I  had  enough  bacon  and  groceries  to  take  me 
all  the  way.  But  I  suppose  I  could  have  killed  some 
fish  for  they  were  jumping  out  of  the  water  all  around 
me  nearly  all  the  time.  I  have  at  other  times  shot  fish 
both  with  rifles  and  shotguns  and  had  no  doubt  of  my 
ability  to  get  some  with  the  revolver.  If  you  are  in 
a  position  to  seize  a  fish  you  do  not  actually  have  to  hit 
him,  for  the  impact  of  the  bullet  on  the  water  right  near 
him  will  stun  him  temporarily. 

When  the  mind  is  strongly  preoccupied  with  any  idea 
your  eyes  will  play  curious  tricks  on  you.  There  was 
scarcely  a  long  stretch  of  the  river  when  I  did  not  dis- 
cover in  the  blue  distance  an  Indian  smoke  curling  up. 
But  as  I  drifted  nearer  and  nearer  the  smoke  became  less 
and  less  certain  until  it  generally  disappeared.  Some 
persisted,  however,  until  I  came  abreast  of  them,  where- 
upon I  used  to  land  and  walk  half  a  mile  or  so  inland 
to  the  top  of  a  hill.  As  these  hilltops  were  frequently 
covered  with  trees  I  used  to  have  to  climb  a  tree  to  get 
a  view,  whereupon  I  failed  to  see  smoke  and  returned 
to  the  river. 

But  in  one  case  the  smoke  was  indubitable.  I  saw 
three  or  four  wisps  of  it  curling  up  among  the  trees 
about  half  a  mile  inland.  I  think  this  was  on  the  third 
or  fourth  day.  Sure  now  of  having  found  people,  I  fired 
three  shots  from  my  revolver  to  attract  their  attention, 
but  got  no  reply.  This  was  strange,  for  a  number  of 
shots  in  rapid  succession  are  recognized  by  the  northern 


224        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

Indians  everywhere  as  a  signal  and  are  always  replied 
to.  There  was  no  doubt  about  the  smoke,  however,  so 
I  went  inland  and  found  its  origin  in  some  burning  peat. 
There  had  been  an  Indian  campfire  there  a  month  or  two 
before  and  since  then  the  fire  had  spread  to  cover  several 
acres  of  ground.  It  had  not  blazed  up  but  was  smolder- 
ing its  way  through  the  peat. 

The  reason  why  the  peat  fire  had  not  developed  into 
a  real  forest  fire  was  undoubtedly  in  the  frequent  rains. 
I  have  never  seen  such  regularity  of  weather.  There 
used  to  be  clear  skies  until  somewhere  between  eleven 
and  one  o'clock,  whereupon  clouds  gathered  and  by  three 
there  would  be  at  least  one  light  shower  followed  some- 
times by  several  others.  By  six  or  seven  o'clock  the 
skies  were  clear  again  and  remained  so  during  the  night. 
This  rain  had  soaked  me  every  day  not  at  all  to  my 
advantage  but  had  been  a  blessing  thus  far  in  saving 
the  forest.  There  was  a  much  heavier  rain  three  or  four 
days  after  this  which  probably  killed  the  peat  fire. 
Had  there  been  a  dry  spell  instead,  and  especially  dry 
weather  accompanied  by  a  high  wind,  there  would  have 
developed  one  of  the  fires  which  so  frequently  destroy 
hundreds  and  even  thousands  of  square  miles  of  the  vast 
forests  of  the  North. 

It  was  a  curious  chance  which  guided  me  inland  at 
this  particular  place,  for  on  my  way  back  I  discovered 
evidence  of  what  was  probably  one  of  the  many  untold 
tragedies  of  the  North.  The  story,  as  I  have  deduced 
it  from  the  evidence,  needs  the  historical  background  of 
the  gold  rush. 

In  the  history  of  the  northern  gold  fields  the  year  1898 
takes  the  place  of  1849  m  the  fiold  days  of  California. 
In  1897  stories  had  come  to  the  world  of  newspapers, 


DOWN  THE  PORCUPINE  RIVER  225 

telling  of  fabulous  riches  in  the  Klondike  section  of  the 
Canadian  part  of  the  Yukon  valley.  The  idea  presently 
crystallized  that  there  were  four  routes  by  which  this 
El  Dorado  could  be  reached.  One  lay  by  Seattle  and 
Skagway  and  the  mountain  passes  that  lead  to  the  upper 
Yukon  near  White  Horse  and  then  down  the  Yukon  to 
the  gold  country.  Another  trail  was  from  Edmonton 
through  the  Peace  River  Valley.  A  third  went  from 
Edmonton  down  the  Athabasca  and  Slave  Rivers  and 
through  Great  Slave  Lake  to  the  mouth  of  the  Liard  and 
then  up  the  Liard  and  thus  across  the  mountains.  With 
none  of  these  are  we  concerned  here  but  only  with  the 
fourth  route  which  came  on  down  the  Mackenzie  past 
the  Liard  to  Macpherson  and  then  over  the  mountains 
either  by  the  route  I  had  just  traversed  or  else  by  the 
Rat  River  portage  which  we  had  considered  taking.  I 
had  not  taken  the  Rat  River  route  because  I  had  not 
had  a  boat,  and  exactly  so  had  it  been  with  the  miners 
in  1898.  Those  who  had  boats  went  up  the  Rat  and 
then  down  the  Bell.  Those  who  had  no  boats  carried 
pack  loads  over  the  mountains  as  I  had  done,  and  then 
built  rafts  or  boats  on  the  Bell  to  continue  the  journey. 
Some  took  a  third  way,  going  up  the  Peel  River  and  then 
crossing  from  the  upper  Peel  to  the  Klondike. 

The  men  who  came  down  the  Mackenzie  in  hundreds 
were  of  all  sorts.  Only  a  few  were  fitted  for  their  ad- 
venture through  previous  experience  such  as  might  be 
gained  in  the  winter  woods  of  Michigan  or  Ontario. 
Others,  although  miners  of  long  experience,  came  from 
Australia  or  South  Africa  and  were  as  little  trained  for 
the  northern  journey  as  if  they  had  come  from  farms 
in  Illinois.  Some  did  come  from  farms  in  Illinois  or 
from  shops  in  England  or  New  England.    A  few  of  these 


226        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

had  such  natural  gifts  that  they  adapted  themselves  to 
northern  conditions,  but  in  the  main  the  Klondikers  were 
hopeless  incompetents.  It  seems  difficult  now  to  believe 
how  many  of  them  found  a  way  of  dying  by  drowning 
or  some  other  accident  or  by  starving  or  committing 
suicide.    Many  died  of  scurvy. 

For  the  scurvy  they  were  not  individually  to  blame, 
for  their  ignorance  of  how  easily  it  can  be  prevented 
was  merely  the  ignorance  of  the  medical  profession  oi 
that  day  who  supposed  that  scurvy  could  be  prevented 
only  by  the  drinking  of  lime  juice  or  the  eating  of  vege- 
tables and  fruits.  We  know  now  that  scurvy  can  be 
cured  by  an  underdone  steak  no  less  than  by  a  raw  potato 
or  an  orange.  We  know  also  that  while  uncooked  foods, 
whether  fruits,  vegetables  or  meat,  are  good  antidotes 
for  scurvy,  they  lose  their  power  on  being  cooked.  But 
in  their  ignorance  the  prospectors  used  to  eat  mainly 
the  beans  and  bacon  and  other  things  they  had  brought 
with  them.  A  few  of  them  only  had  the  luck  or  skill 
to  kill  game,  in  which  case  they  ordinarily  overcooked 
the  meat  until  it  no  longer  had  any  value  as  a  preven- 
tive or  cure  for  scurvy.  When  they  actually  became  ill 
with  the  disease  some  of  them  took  the  boughs  of  the 
spruce  trees,  considering  them  a  vegetable  and  a  possible 
cure  for  scurvy.  They  probably  would  have  been  a  cure 
had  they  been  eaten  raw  in  the  manner  of  a  salad,  but 
the  miners  ordinarily  put  them  in  pots  and  boiled  them 
for  hours,  making  a  decoction  which  they  called  spruce 
tea.  This  was  drunk  without  any  beneficial  effect  so  far 
as  the  scurvy  was  concerned,  and  many  who  had  escaped 
drowning  in  the  rivers  or  hunger  on  the  portages  died  of 
this  loathsome  disease. 

On  my  way  back  from  the  fire  that  had  led  me  half 


DOWN  THE  PORCUPINE  RIVER  227 

a  mile  into  the  woods  I  came  upon  what  I  supposed  to 
be  the  evidence  of  one  of  these  tragedies.  It  was  a 
partly-built  log  cabin,  but  beautifully  built  so  far  as  it 
went.  The  logs  were  of  uniform  size,  hewn  smooth  and 
well  fitted  together.  The  walls  were  of  the  ordinary  full 
height  for  a  log  cabin  but  there  the  building  had  stopped. 
No  openings  had  been  cut  in  the  walls  for  windows  or 
for  a  door,  and  there  was  only  a  partial  roof  composed 
of  poles  with  some  brush  on  top.  I  climbed  up  on  the 
wall  and  dropped  inside.  Here  I  found  a  Bible  decayed 
to  pieces,  a  rusted  teapot,  a  heavily  silver-plated  Win- 
chester rifle,  a  fur  robe  so  decayed  that  it  resembled  wet 
brown  paper,  a  china  saucer  that  had  been  used  for  a 
grease  lamp,  and  some  other  odds  and  ends. 

It  seemed  to  me  that  these  were  articles  which  under 
ordinary  circumstances  would  not  have  been  left  behind. 
And  had  they  been  left,  they  would  have  been  piled  up 
in  a  corner  or  arranged  in  some  orderly  way.  I  imagine 
at  the  time  the  tragedy  occurred  the  men  who  were 
building  the  house  were  still  living  in  a  tent  camp  down 
by  the  river  where  they  had  most  of  their  belongings. 
After  some  misfortune  had  happened  to  them,  some  In- 
dians or  other  miners  had  probably  found  the  tent  camp 
and  taken  it  away  but  the  house  had  escaped  notice, 
for  it  was  so  hidden  by  trees  that  there  was  no  sign  of 
it  from  the  river.  The  logs  out  of  which  the  house  had 
been  built  had  all  been  chopped  nearby  and  the  trees 
close  to  the  river  left  intact. 

I  should  probably  have  taken  with  me  at  least  the 
silver-plated  rifle  but  for  the  plan  which  I  had  already 
formed  of  some  day  soon  leaving  my  raft  behind  and 
walking  along  the  river  till  I  found  Indians.  I 
was  beginning  to  lose  patience  with  the  raft;  and  if  I 


228        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

undertook  to  walk  the  added  weight  of  the  rifle  would  be 
a  burden. 

The  night  after  my  discovery  of  this  deserted  cabin 
I  was  as  usual  sleeping  on  my  raft  as  it  drifted. 
Midsummer  was  now  long  past;  furthermore,  I  was 
traveling  south  so  that  it  was  dark  for  two  or  three  hours 
around  midnight.  Because  of  the  uncertainty  of  every- 
thing I  never  slept  soundly.  Now  I  was  awakened  by 
what  I  took  at  first  for  the  rustle  of  leaves.  I  was  lying 
quietly  locking  up  at  the  stars  and  listening  to  what 
sounded  like  wind  among  trees,  when  it  suddenly  oc- 
curred to  me  that  this  could  not  be  the  sound  of  any 
wind  for  there  were  no  leaves  to  rustle — an  evergreen 
forest  makes  no  such  sound  as  that  made  by  aspen  leaves 
or  those  of  other  deciduous  trees. 

If  it  was  not  the  noise  of  leaves  it  must  be  the  only 
logical  noise  of  the  same  sort  that  one  may  hear  in  this 
locality — the  murmur  of  a  rapid  or  a  waterfall.  It  was 
so  dark  that  I  could  not  see  the  land  clearly  on  either 
bank  of  the  river  and  apparently  the  stream  at  this  par- 
ticular point  was  especially  wide.  I  had  no  idea  on 
which  side  the  rapids  would  be  worse,  but  knew  that  the 
most  favorable  place  to  run  them  would  be  where  the 
current  was  strongest.  The  chances  were  that  my  raft 
would  keep  to  the  strongest  current  and  would  find  a 
safe  place  (if  there  was  one)  if  I  left  it  to  its  own 
course. 

It  was  a  tense  half  hour  as  I  sat  motionless  in  the 

middle  of  my  raft  with  the  noise  of  the  rapids  gradually 

increasing.     I  don't  think  it  ever  became  loud  enough 

to  deserve  the  name  of  a  roar  but  it  sounded  quite  loud 

»ugh  to  make  me  feel  uncomfortable. 

When  I  got  almost  to  the  rapids  the  current  had  taken 


DOWN  THE  PORCUPINE  RIVER  223 

the  raft  near  enough  to  one  river  bank  so  that  I  could 
see  the  trees  plainly.  They  were  flitting  by  rapidly 
which  showed  my  speed  was  increasing.  Then  the  raft 
began  to  bump  on  an  occasional  boulder.  The  bumps 
became  more  and  more  frequent  and  I  was  wondering 
whether  the  rope  would  hold  by  which  the  logs  were  tied 
together,  when  all  of  a  sudden  the  downstream  end  of 
the  raft  stuck  fast.  Then  the  raft  swung  broadside  to 
the  current  and  bumped  along  over  two  or  three  more 
boulders,  stopped,  and  the  upstream  edge  began  to  rise 
as  if  the  raft  were  about  to  flop  over.  I  grabbed  all  my 
belongings,  including  the  stones  which  made  the  fire- 
place, and  shifted  them  and  myself  to  the  rising  edge. 
This  was  enough  to  bring  it  down  and  lift  the  down- 
stream edge  so  that  the  raft  commenced  moving  again. 
There  were  half  a  dozen  more  serious  bumps  and  then 
we  drifted  into  quiet  water  below. 

It  was  not  particularly  likely  that  there  would  be  a 
second  rapid  just  below  this  one.  But  drifting  through 
an  unknown  rapid  in  the  dark  is  no  fun,  and  it  had 
taken  so  much  of  my  nerve  that  after  a  little  debate  with 
myself  I  started  poling  ashore.  I  landed  about  half  a 
mile  below  the  rapids,  and  decided  to  sleep  there  and 
wait  for  daylight.  After  this  I  traveled  each  day  only 
while  there  was  light  enough  to  see  some  distance  ahead, 
which  was  about  eighteen  hours  of  the  twenty-four. 

The  next  day  I  wrote  in  my  diary:  "Home  has  never 
seemed  as  far  away  as  it  does  moping  down  this  infernal 
river  on  a  headstrong  and  lazy  raft."  The  feeling  of 
impatience  indicated  by  this  entry  kept  growing.  The 
next  day  I  came  to  the  end  of  my  patience,  poled  the 
raft  ashore,  packed  on  my  back  the  twenty  or  thirty 
pounds  of  food  and  other  things  I  had  with  me  (little 


230        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

beyond  my  diary  and  some  mail  I  was  carrying  out  for 
the  police),  and  started  to  walk  along  the  river. 

But  if  rafting  had  its  disadvantages,  walking  had  them 
no  less.  To  begin  with,  the  river  bank  was  made  up  of 
angular  blocks  of  rock  which  began  to  hurt  my  feet  right 
away  and  promised  to  hurt  them  more  as  I  walked  fur- 
ther. Then  my  clothing  and  especially  my  footgear  was 
not  in  the  best  of  condition.  On  the  rest  of  my  body 
I  was  wearing  woolen  clothes  but  on  my  feet  I  had 
Eskimo  style  water  boots.  The  uppers  of  these  are  made 
of  seal  skin  as  thin  and  soft  as  a  kid  glove  but  perfectly 
waterproof.  The  soles  are  of  the  thick  leather  of  the 
bearded  seal.  This  is  almost  perfect  footgear  for  the 
summer  if  it  is  kept  in  condition.  But  that  can  be  ac- 
complished only  with  extreme  care.  You  must  never 
wear  the  same  pair  of  boots  more  than  at  the  most  two 
days  in  succession,  when  you  take  them  off  and  dry  them 
thoroughly.  Well  taken  care  of,  two  pairs  of  boots  regu- 
larly alternated  may  last  four  or  five  months,  but  if  you 
wear  one  pair  continuously  it  will  rot  to  pieces  in  a  few 
days.  On  the  march  over  the  mountains  from  Mac- 
pherson  I  had  taken  the  boots  off  in  the  evening  and 
managed  to  dry  them  fairly  well  every  night  so  that, 
although  I  did  not  have  another  pair  to  change  into,  I 
still  kept  them  in  fair  condition.  But  it  was  chilly  sleep- 
ing on  the  raft  and  I  had  kept  my  boots  on.  Similarly 
when  I  went  ashore  I  had  kept  all  my  clothes  on,  for 
I  had  no  bedding  and  shivered  as  it  was,  especially  as 
I  got  soaking  wet  every  day  in  the  afternoon  showers. 

After  I  had  been  walking  a  few  hundred  yards  along 
the  river  bank  I  stopped  to  adjust  the  laces  that  are 
bound  around  the  ankle  of  the  water  boot.  When  I 
pulled  on  these  one  of  them  came  off.     A  little  later 


DOWN  THE  PORCUPLNE  RIVER  231 

when  I  was  fixing  the  other  boot  and  gave  a  pull  on  the 
upper  I  tore  a  great  opening  in  it  along  the  edge  of  the 
sole.  I  now  realized  that  my  boots  were  rotten  and  that 
I  should  not  be  able  to  walk  in  them  many  days. 

I  might  have  turned  back  in  an  hour  or  so  because 
of  the  boots  but  what  actually  turned  me  back  was  that 
I  came  to  a  tributary  river  so  deep  that  it  could  not  be 
waded  and  so  turbulent  that  trying  to  swim  it  would 
have  been  dangerous.  I  was  carrying  the  same  ax  and 
could  perhaps  have  gone  half  a  mile  upstream  and  found 
a  place  where  I  could  make  a  raft  for  crossing  out  of 
two  or  three  trees,  but  rather  than  do  this  I  went  back 
for  my  old  raft. 

The  walk  from  the  place  where  I  had  left  the  raft 
behind  to  the  uncrossable  stream  and  back  was  only  four 
or  five  miles  but  my  feet  were  so  badly  bruised  by  the 
rocks  in  that  short  distance  that  I  was  thoroughly  recon- 
ciled to  the  raft.  Although  at  the  time  I  regarded  this 
as  a  useless  delay,  I  think  now  it  was  really  worth  while 
through  the  peace  of  mind  it  gave  me.  Before  that  I 
had  been  thinking  and  planning  continually  and  worry- 
ing about  whether  I  should  not  leave  the  raft  behind. 
Now  I  had  no  doubts  about  the  advisability  of  sticking 
to  it  to  the  end. 

The  interest  of  the  down  river  journey  was  heightened 
by  my  absolute  ignorance  of  the  country.  The  decision 
to  start  south  had  been  made  so  hurriedly  at  Herschel 
Island  that  we  had  not  thought  of  asking  the  whalers 
for  a  possible  map.  At  Macpherson  none  was  obtain- 
able. Firth  had  told  me  a  good  deal  about  the  river  but 
much  of  what  he  told  me  I  had  forgotten.  I  knew  so 
little  that  when  a  river  the  same  size  as  the  Bell  joined 
it  on  my  left-hand  side,  I  was  surprised,  for  I  thought 


232        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

the  Porcupine  ought  to  come  in  on  the  right-hand  bank. 
Indubitably  this  was  the  Porcupine,  however,  for  I  knew 
it  to  be  a  stream  somewhat  larger  in  reality  than  the 
Bell  and  that  these  two  are  the  only  rivers  of  comparable 
size.  I  remembered  Firth  had  told  me  that  although  the 
Old  Crow  was  large,  it  was  a  good  deal  smaller  than 
the  Bell. 

Not  far  from  the  Porcupine  mouth  I  saw  the  second 
moose.  It  was  walking  along  the  river  bank,  headed 
downstream,  and  a  quarter  of  a  mile  away  from  the  raft. 
Just  to  see  what  it  would  do,  I  fired  my  revolver  into  the 
hillside  above  it.  Either  the  actual  noise  of  the  bullet 
striking  the  hillside  or  the  echo  of  the  shot  deceived  the 
animal  into  thinking  the  danger  was  up  the  hill,  for  after 
trotting  along  the  bank  a  few  steps  it  plunged  into  the 
river  to  swim  across.  When  it  got  abreast  of  my  raft 
and  about  a  hundred  yards  downstream  from  it,  it  sud- 
denly turned  and  swam  back  again.  I  think  this  was 
because  I  was  trying  to  row  (for  the  river  just  here  was 
too  deep  for  poling)  and  it  probably  heard  the  splashing. 

Rafts  are  ordinarily  handled  with  poles  and  I  had  one 
about  fourteen  feet  long.  I  seldom  used  it  except  for 
sounding  purposes.  I  found  by  that  means  that  the 
water  is  more  than  fourteen  feet  deep  in  a  good  many 
places.  Apart  from  the  rapid  through  which  I  went  in 
the  night,  I  think  the  river  could  have  been  navigated 
at  that  season  by  a  boat  drawing  three  or  four  feet  of 
water.  But  this  seemed  to  be  about  the  season  of  high 
water.    Now  that  I  was  si;  ashore  nights,  I  used 

to  put  a  mark  in  the  water's  edge  in  the  evening  and 
take  it  up  the  next  morning.  I  would  find  by  this  means 
that  the  river  had  risen  some  nights  as  much  as  an  inch 
per  hour.    By  the  water  marks  along  the  beach  I  could 


DOWN  THE  PORCUPINE  RIVER  233 

tell  that  the  water  seldom  got  higher  than  it  now  was 
except  in  spring  freshets. 

At  various  points  I  had  seen  signs  of  old  Indian  camp- 
ings. In  some  places  there  were  merely  the  sites  of 
camp  fires  and  the  pegs  driven  in  the  mud  to  which  the 
Indians  had  fastened  their  nets  when  they  were  fishing. 
In  other  places  were  the  conical  teepee  frames  over 
which  they  had  spread  their  tents.  Occasionally  there 
was  a  platform  cache. 

Shortly  after  passing  the  juncture  of  the  Bell  and 
Porcupine  I  came  to  a  village  site  which  in  addition  to 
the  teepee  frames  had  a  platform  cache  with  something 
on  it.  I  went  ashore  to  investigate  and  found  some 
bundles  of  Indian  property  and  a  good  deal  of  dried 
moose  meat  covered  up  by  a  large  piece  of  moose  skin. 
My  provisions  were  beginning  to  run  low  and  I  am  fond 
of  dried  moose  meat,  so  I  took  several  pounds  of  it  and 
left  in  payment  a  silk  handkerchief.  Had  I  had  nothing 
to  pay  with  I  should  have  been  entitled  by  the  custom 
of  the  country  to  take  what  food  I  thought  I  needed  to 
(  arry  me  to  the  next  settlement.  But  I  had  been  provided 
by  Harvey  with  silk  handkerchiefs  for  just  such  pay- 
ments. 

Day  by  day  my  raft  was  getting  lower  in  the  water. 
Some  of  the  logs  had  been  partly  decayed  and  were 
rapidly  getting  watersoaked.  I  had  to  throw  away  my 
stone  fireplace  to  lighten  the  raft.  A  day  later  the  water 
was  washing  over  whenever  I  came  into  a  slight  ripple,  so 
I  went  ashore  and  got  an  armful  of  dry  willows  out  of 
which  I  made  a  kind  of  nest  on  the  middle  of  the  raft 
and  sat  or  slept  on  that.  The  day  after  I  built  this  the 
water-logging  process  had  gone  so  much  farther  that  there 
did  not  show  above  the  water  anything  but  my  nest  and 


234        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

some  humps  of  two  or  three  crooked  logs  in  the  raft. 

After  throwing  away  my  fireplace  I  had  to  do  whatever 
cooking  there  was  on. shore.  The  first  morning  of  this 
cooking  I  left  beside  the  fireplace  on  shore  my  package 
of  tea.  This  was  two  or  three  pounds  and  far  more  than 
I  could  possibly  have  needed.  I  had  been  carrying  it  for 
trade  with  any  Indians  I  might  happen  to  meet. 

The  evening  of  August  26th  I  came  to  a  deserted  vil- 
lage just  as  it  was  getting  dark.  The  houses  appeared  as 
if  they  might  have  been  inhabited  the  previous  winter 
and  as  if  the  people  intended  returning  to  them.  Still, 
the  half-dozen  cabins  were  empty  of  furniture  and  the 
doors  of  some  of  them  open.  It  had  been  raining  par- 
ticularly heavily  that  day  and  I  was  soaking  wet,  so  I  was 
glad  of  the  shelter  of  a  roof.  The  reason  I  knew  the 
houses  were  entirely  empty  was  that  I  went  into  every 
one  of  them  in  search  of  a  possible  blanket  or  robe  that 
an  Indian  might  have  left  for  me  to  sleep  under.  Al- 
though it  was  dark,  my  exploration  of  each  cabin  was 
thorough,  but  I  found  no  beds  or  bedding. 

I  have  said  that  after  my  midnight  adventure  with  the 
rapids  I  was  in  the  habit  of  sleeping  ashore  six  hours. 
Sleeping  is  merely  a  courtesy  description,  for  when  the 
wetness  due  to  the  afternoon  showers  was  combined  with 
the  chill  of  the  night,  it  kept  me  from  any  real  sleep. 
I  did  get  good  naps  on  my  craft,  however,  in  the  fore- 
noons while  the  sun  was  shining. 

After  my  night  in  the  deserted  village  I  was  up  at 
dawn  and  made  a  huge  bonfire.  It  is  much  easier  cook- 
ing over  a  small  fire  but  this  one  was  primarily  for 
warmth.  As  I  was  finishing  breakfast  I  was  startled  to 
hear  a  voice  behind  me.  On  looking  around  I  saw  an 
Indian  a  few  yards  away  coming  up  from  the  river  where 


DOWN  THE  PORCUPINE  RIVER  235 

he  had  beached  his  canoe.  I  should  have  been  glad  to 
see  anybody,  but  I  was  particularly  glad  to  recognize  this 
old  fellow  for  I  had  met  him  at  Macpherson  the  year 
before.  He  had  been  there  in  his  capacity  of  deacon  of 
the  Church  of  England  to  confer  with  the  missionary  and 
had  later  been  the  man  who  undertook  to  help  Stewart 
across  the  mountains.  The  Deacon  spoke  passable 
English  and  I  soon  knew  how  everything  stood. 

The  house  I  had  slept  in  was  the  Deacon's.  He  and 
his  family  would  occupy  it  after  the  freeze-up  some  two 
months  from  now.  They  and  the  other  Indians  that 
belonged  in  this  village  were  now  camped  about  half  a 
mile  away  beyond  the  next  bend,  and  if  I  had  not  gone 
ashore  just  here  because  of  seeing  the  houses  I  should 
a  few  minutes  later  have  drifted  into  sight  of  their  camp- 
fires  and  should  have  had  a  far  more  pleasant  night.  We 
proceeded  to  their  camp  now.  The  Deacon's  canoe  was 
so  small  that  two  of  us  could  not  ride  in  it  and  I  had 
to  pole  my  way  to  the  village  with  my  raft.  Once  there 
my  regrets  for  an  uncomfortable  night  were  soon  forgot- 
ten in  the  warm  welcome  of  the  Indians. 

At  the  village  there  were  small  canoes,  all  made  of 
birch  bark.  It  is  one  of  the  signs  of  intimate  connection 
between  these  Indians  and  the  Eskimos  to  the  north  that 
their  canoes  are  much  the  shape  and  size  of  the  Eskimo 
kayaks,  although  differing,  of  course,  in  not  being  covered 
over.  They  are  one-man  boats.  One  of  them  was  almost 
big  enough  for  two  men,  however,  and  I  asked  the  Deacon 
whether  he  would  not  undertake  to  carry  me  in  that  down 
to  Rampart  House.  At  first  he  said  it  could  not  be  done. 
We  considered  the  possibility  of  my  paddling  my  own 
canoe,  but  this  type  of  craft  is  so  exceedingly  cranky  and 
there  would  be  some  rapids  to  run,  so  the  Indians  were 


236        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

all  against  my  trying  it.  At  first  they  thought  of  build- 
ing a  large  raft  for  me,  for  they  said  my  small  and  water- 
logged one  would  never  do  for  running  the  rapids.  Later, 
however,  we  made  an  actual  trial  of  the  biggest  canoe 
and  it  turned  out  that  we  had  about  two  inches  of  free- 
board with  the  two  of  us  in  it.  We  decided  that  this 
would  be  all  right  in  quiet  water.  The  Deacon  knew 
where  all  the  rapids  were  and  said  he  would  land  me 
above  each  series  of  rapids  and  run  them  alone,  picking 
me  up  again  below  the  dangerous  water. 

Up  to  now  I  had  thought  it  probable  that  the  Indians 
would  know  about  the  cabin  I  had  found  and  about  which 
I  had  woven  the  story  of  a  gold  seeker  tragedy.  Careful 
inquiry  showed  that  they  had  no  knowledge  of  the  place, 
although  they  had  been  up  and  down  that  river  every 
summer  by  canoe  and  every  winter  by  dog  team  their 
whole  lives  long.  I  tried  my  best  to  describe  the  location, 
and  they  said  they  would  look  for  it  whenever  they 
went  up  that  way.     I  have  never  heard  if  they  found  it. 

But  a  story  that  interested  them  more  than  the  deserted 
cabin  was  my  account  of  how  I  had  cooked  breakfast 
ashore  and  had  forgotten  several  pounds  of  tea  tied  up 
in  a  silk  handkerchief.  I  had  not  been  at  the  village 
an  hour  when  one  of  the  men  got  into  his  canoe  and 
started  upstream  in  search  of  the  tea  and  handkerchief. 
I  estimate  he  had  forty  miles  to  go.  However,  he  said 
that  he  might  get  a  moose  on  the  journey,  thus  killing 
two  birds  with  one  stone. 

Compared  to  my  sluggish  drift,  the  canoe  journey  from 
the  mouth  of  the»01d  (Vow  seemed  like  flying.  Between 
paddle  and  current  we  made  from  six  to  eight  miles  an 
hour.  There  were  no  rapids  that  could  not  be  easily  run 
in  a  good  canoe  or  even  in  one  of  these  bark  canoes  with 


DOWN  THE  PORCUPINE  RIVER  237 

a  reasonable  load,  but  overloaded  as  we  were  I  had  to  go 
ashore  a  few  times  to  walk  around  a  rapid.  Occasionally 
we  took  a  chance  and  ran  through  a  ripple,  but  it  never 
really  paid,  for  the  canoe  always  sprung  a  leak  and  each 
time  we  only  barely  got  ashore  before  sinking.  Then  it 
took  two  or  three  hours  to  make  a  fire,  melt  some  spruce 
gum  and  patch  up  the  cracks  in  the  bark. 

It  took  tv/o  days  from  Old  Crow  River  to  Rampart 
House.  A  few  miles  above  that  trading  post  we  came  to 
an  encampment  of  a  white  man,  Archie  Linklater,  who 
was  living  there  with  his  Indian  wife  and  family.  We 
had  a  pleasant  visit  with  them,  after  which  Linklater  took 
me  on  his  raft  to  Rampart  House,  for  the  river  between 
was  swift  and  would  not  have  been  safe  to  run  in  a  bark 
canoe  carrying  two  men. 

At  Rampart  House  I  had  the  warmest  sort  of  welcome 
from  Daniel  Cadzow,  the  local  trader  and  only  resident 
white  man  (there  were  several  other  white  men  who  made 
up  a  sort  of  floating  population).  It  would  have  been 
pleasant  to  linger  there  as  he  urged  me  to  do  but  it  was 
now  the  30th  of  August  and  in  two  or  three  days  Mr. 
Harrison  might  reach  Athabasca  Landing  and  send  out 
over  the  world  the  report  that  I  had  told  at  Herschel 
Island  of  the  death  of  Lefnngwell,  Mikkelson  and  Stork- 
erson.  As  soon  as  Mr.  Cadzow  understood  how  pressing 
the  case  was  he  ceased  his  urging  that  I  should  stay  and 
devoted  himself  instead  to  helping  with  preparations  for 
my  continuing  the  journey.  I  had  thought  of  hiring 
Indians,  but  Cadzow  said  that  Linklater  would  take  me 
to  Fort  Yukon  much  more  rapidly  than  any  Indian. 
Linklater  undertook  the  job,  and  in  a  few  hours  he  and 
his  family  were  on  their  way  with  me  in  a  flat-bottomed 
rowboat. 


238        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

I  have  never  seen  a  man  who  could  work  as  Linklater 
did.  He  was  over  six  feet  in  height,  powerfully  built 
and  used  to  the  roughest  kind  of  work.  For  years  he  had 
been  a  member  of  the  Royal  Northwest  Mounted  Police 
at  Dawson,  at  which  time  he  had  gained  a  reputation  as 
a  traveler.  He  had  never  been  a  sailor,  but  he  must  have 
done  a  good  deal  of  rowing  in  his  time,  for  he  kept  stead- 
ily at  the  oars  something  like  sixteen  hours  a  day.  The 
current  was  sluggish  and  we  had  little  help  from  it,  so 
that  with  all  our  hard  work  we  did  not  get  to  Fort  Yukon 
until  the  evening  of  September  3rd.  It  turned  out,  how- 
ever, that  somewhat  greater  speed  would  not  have  helped 
particularly,  for  there  was  only  one  logical  way  of  pro- 
ceeding upstream  from  Fort  Yukon  to  the  telegraph  sta- 
tion at  Eagle  and  that  was  by  the  river  streamer  Hantm, 
which  was  due  about  noon  of  the  4th.  She  came  some 
ten  hours  earlier  than  that  and  I  was  awakened  from  a 
sound  sleep  to  scramble  aboard  in  the  early  morning. 
Then  everything  went  well  for  a  while. 

The  Hanna  was  carrying  a  huge  cargo,  a  part  of  which 
consisted  of  several  hundred  tons  of  oats  in  bags.  She 
was  loaded  deeper  than  usual  and  the  river  had  been 
dropping  rapidly,  so  that  I  found  soon  after  getting 
aboard  that  there  was  great  concern  as  to  whether  we 
should  be  able  to  get  through  the  Yukon  flats.  This  is  a 
long  stretch  where  the  river,  normally  about  a  mile  or 
two  in  width,  spreads  out  to  six  or  eight  miles  and  winds 
its  way  through  a  maze  of  low  islands.  We  soon  began 
to  have  trouble  with  shoal  water  and  eventually  came  to 
a  channel  not  deep  enough  for  passage.  There  was  noth- 
ing to  do  but  pull  up  to  the  bank  and  unload  some  of  our 
freight  so  as  to  lighten  the  draught  of  the  steamer. 

There  were  on  board  the  boat  about  a  hundred  laborers 


DOWN  THE  PORCUPINE  RIVER  239 

who  were  returning  to  Seattle  after  a  season  in  the  Alaska 
gold  mines.  The  captain  offered  these  men  a  dollar  an 
hour  if  they  would  turn  to  and  help  the  crew  unload 
the  bags  of  oats,  but  it  appeared  that  the  miners  had  had 
their  fare  paid  by  their  employers  all  the  way  out  to 
Seattle  and  that  this  fare  included  board.  They  said, 
accordingly,  that  they  did  not  care  how  long  they  were 
stuck;  in  fact,  the  longer  we  were  stuck  the  better  it 
suited  them,  for  they  would  get  that  much  more  free 
board.  Furthermore,  they  said  they  were  through  work- 
ing for  the  season,  and  that  they  were  miners  anyhow  and 
not  stevedores. 

There  happened  to  be  on  the  ship  a  number  of  pas- 
sengers who  were  eager  to  get  to  Dawson  and  Seattle. 
I  was  in  no  particular  hurry  to  reach  Seattle  but  I  was 
in  a  hurry  to  get  to  Eagle.  Accordingly,  I  was  one  of  the 
passengers  who  volunteered  and  six  or  eight  of  us  worked 
hard  with  the  crew  for  about  twelve  hours  carrying  ashore 
bags  of  oats.  I  think  we  unloaded  six  hundred  tons 
before  the  Hanna  was  light  enough  to  pass  the  shallows 
above. 

We  kept  running  aground  again  and  again  in  spite  of 
our  unloading,  and  all  together  we  lost  about  fifty  hours' 
time.  We  should  have  reached  Eagle  September  5th  but 
actually  got  there  September  7th.  When  I  sent  my 
despatch  out  it  got  to  the  newspapers  thirty-six  hours  too 
late.  In  a  sense  I  had  won  the  race,  for  my  reaching  the 
Yukon  would  have  been  in  time  if  the  steamer  had  only 
kept  to  its  schedule.  As  it  was,  my  news  did  not  prevent 
the  shock  caused  all  over  the  world  by  the  announcement 
of  one  more  polar  tragedy,  nor  did  it  prevent  the  writing 
of  many  editorials,  some  praising  the  heroism  of  the  dead 
and  others  declaiming  against  the  futility  of  such  hare- 


24o        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

brained  adventures.  A  few  of  the  relatives  of  the  sup- 
posedly dead  had  had  the  good  sense  not  to  believe  the 
announcement  but  were,  nevertheless,  in  suspense,  and 
the  rest  who  had  believed  were  in  grief.  But  whether 
suspense  or  grief,  it  was  better  for  all  concerned  that  it 
lasted  only  thirty-six  hours.  Had  I  not  made  the  journey 
over  the  mountains  the  good  news  would  not  have  reached 
the  telegraphs  until  about  two  months  later  when  the 
whaling  ships  carrying  the  other  members  of  our  expedi- 
tion got  to  Nome  or  Unalaska. 


To  a  person  who  comes  to  the  Yukon  from  the  South  it 
has  many  thrills.  Some  call  it  the  frontier  and  some  call 
it  the  wilderness,  and  to  most  such  travelers  the  story 
of  a  journey  along  the  Yukon  River  and  across  the 
Alaska  mountains  would  seem  worth  writing.  But  I 
came  from  the  North  and  to  me  this  was  "civilization." 
I  ceased  to  make  entries  in  my  diary  after  boarding  the 
river  steamer,  and  began  instead  to  plan  my  next  arctic 
expedition. 

Those  plans  were  soon  carried  out.  With  the  fever  of 
the  North  in  my  veins  I  remained  in  New  York  only 
seven  months  and  then  started  on  my  second  expedition, 
to  spend  in  the  Arctic  the  years  1908-12. 


SHORT  STORIES  OF  ADVENTURE 


CHAPTER  I 

HOW  I  LEARNED  TO  HUNT  CARIBOU 

From  childhood  I  have  been  a  hunter  of  animals  from 
rabbits  to  wolves  and  antelope,  from  partridges  to  swans 
and  cranes.  When  I  went  to  the  Arctic  I  had  a  good 
opinion  of  myself  as  a  hunter,  but  most  of  that  was  soon 
talked  out  of  me.  The  theory  was  in  the  air  everywhere 
that  a  white  man  could  not  be  a  good  hunter.  On  my 
trip  down  the  Mackenzie  River,  two  or  three  of  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  traders  had  told  me  that  the  best  white  hunters 
were  better  than  the  best  Indian  hunters,  but  the  great 
majority  of  the  traders  were  of  the  opinion  that  ability 
to  hunt  was  an  inborn  gift  with  Indians  and  Eskimos  and 
that  no  white  man  could  be  really  good  at  it.  When  I 
came  to  the  arctic  coast  I  found  this  opinion  universal. 
The  whalers  had  much  to  tell  of  the  uncanny  prowess  of 
the  Eskimos  and  of  the  misadventures  of  such  white  men 
as  had  thought  they  were  able  to  hunt  and  had  tried  it. 
According  to  the  stories,  the  white  men  not  only  failed  to 
kill  game,  but  they  used  to  get  bewildered  whenever  they 
got  beyond  sight  of  ships  and  habitations.  Sometimes 
they  wandered  back  to  their  own  camp  or  hit  upon  some 
other  camp  by  accident;  sometimes  they  had  to  be  rescued 
by  Eskimos  who  went  out  in  search  of  them;  in  many 
cases  they  starved  or  froze  to  death. 

This  was  the  view  of  white  men  as  hunters  which  I  got 
almost  unanimously  from  the  whalers.  There  were  only 
two  or  three  who  disagreed.     But  what  impressed,  me 

243 


244        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

even  more  than  this  nearly  unanimous  opinion  of  the 
whites  was  the  entirely  unanimous  opinion  of  the  Eskimos. 
According  to  their  account,  the  white  men  who  had  gone 
hunting  with  them  were  uniformly  incompetent.  Most 
of  them  could  not  hit  anything  they  tried  to  shoot.  A  few 
white  men  were  wonderful  marksmen  when  they  were 
shooting  at  a  still  target,  but  were  so  badly  afflicted  with 
''buck  fever"  that  they  could  not  hit  caribou  or  other 
big  game.  No  white  man  was  supposed  to  be  able  to 
find  his  way  about.  According  to  the  Eskimo  view,  a 
white  man  was  an  amiable,  overgrown  baby  and  had  to 
be  watched  and  protected  and  helped  in  every  way.  At 
first  these  opinions  did  not  impress  me  very  strongly,  but 
I  heard  them  from  all  sides  and  gradually  they  began  to 
soak  in. 

I  spent  my  first  arctic  winter  and  summer  with  Eskimos 
who  lived  mainly  by  fishing.  If  I  applied  myself,  I 
found  I  could  fish  as  well  as  they,  nor  did  that  surprise 
them  for  they  were  all  of  the  opinion  that  white  men  are 
good  at  catching  any  kind  of  water  game  with  hook  or 
net.  To  see  a  white  man  do  well  at  any  such  work,  from 
herring  fishing  to  whaling,  did  not  surprise  them.  They 
knew  also  that  white  men  can  catch  seals  in  nets.  But 
white  men  were  unable  to  get  seals  that  had  crawled  out 
on  top  of  the  ice,  for  then  the  tactics  of  getting  them  had 
to  be  those  of  the  hunter  and  not  the  fisherman. 

During  my  first  summer  I  found  I  could  kill  ducks 
and  geese  as  well  as  the  Eskimos.  This  did  not  surprise 
flu  m  either,  for  it  was  in  accordance  with  their  general 
view.  White  men  were  good  with  fowling  pieces  and 
could  even  kill  rabbits. 

By  the  fall  of  1908  (my  second  year  in  the  Arctic)  I 
had,  in  spite  of  myself,  become  obsessed  with  the  idea  that 


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HOW  I  LEARNED  TO  HUNT  CARIBOU      245 

a  white  man  cannot  be  a  good  hunter,  and  that  it  is  not 
safe  for  him  to  be  out  alone  away  from  the  wise  Eskimos. 
Had  any  one  put  it  to  me  in  just  those  words  I  might  have 
argued  against  it,  for  my  reason  was  unconvinced.  But 
subconsciously  I  had  absorbed  a  profound  mistrust  of  my 
own  ability  to  take  care  of  myself. 

Later  in  September,  1908,  a' party  of  us  were  on  our 
way  by  sledge  east  along  the  north  coast  of  Alaska.  I 
had  one  white  companion,  Storker  Storkerson,  with  whom 
I  was  destined  to  be  continuously  associated  through  most 
of  the  following  nine  years  of  polar  work.  He  was  a 
sailor  and  full  of  confidence  in  himself  in  every  way, 
except  that  like  me  he  had  been  talked  into  the  belief  that 
he  would  not  be  able  to  make  a  living  hunting  and  that 
he  was  in  danger  of  losing  his  way  if  he  got  separated 
from  his  Eskimo  guides. 

The  Eskimos  of  my  party  were  a  middle-aged  man,  by 
name  Kunaluak,  and  my  old  friend,  Uavinirk,  with  his 
wife  Mamayauk  and  their  young  daughter.  Uavinirk 
differed  from  the  general  run  in  several  ways.  For  one 
thing,  he  had  a  greater  admiration  for  white  men  than  was 
common  among  his  countrymen  at  that  time.  The  gen- 
eral Eskimo  view  was  that  the  white  men  are  rich  and 
fortunate,  but  unskilled  and  incompetent  in  the  things 
that  rcaily  matter.  They  felt  about  the  whaling  captains 
and  about  travelers  like  me  somewhat  as  farmers  or  sailors 
might  feel  about  grand  opera  singers  or  men  who  have 
inherited  riches.  But  Uavinirk  used  to  maintain  that  the 
white  men  really  had  considerable  native  ability  and  that 
some  of  them  were  capable  of  becoming  good  winter  trav- 
elers and  even  good  hunters.  I  had  heard  him  argue  along 
those  lines  several  times  and  now  he  had  frequent  talks 
with  Kunaluak  on  this  subject.     Kunaluak  maintained 


246        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

that  white  men  had  gifts  of  a  certain  kind  entirely  above 
the  comprehension  of  an  Eskimo,  but  that  in  such  every- 
day matters  as  getting  back  safely  to  camp  when  it  is 
dark  and  when  you  are  ten  miles  away  from  home  they 
are  hopelessly  incompetent.  To  illustrate  their  incom- 
petence in  caribou  hunting,  he  told  stories  of  the  adven- 
tures of  sailors  he  had  hunted  with.  We  all  had  to  join 
in  the  laughter.  Ilavinirk  was  forced  to  admit  the  truth 
of  the  particular  stories  told  by  Kunaluak  but  he  stoutly 
maintained  that  a  few  white  men  were  exceptions  to  the 
rule. 

Privately  Ilavinirk  told  me  that  I  must  not  be  too  much 
impressed  with  what  Kunaluak  and  all  the  rest  were  say- 
ing. He  gave  me  careful  instructions  in  all  the  laws  of 
caribou  hunting  and  encouraged  me  as  best  he  could  to 
think  that  I  would  be  able  to  make  a  good  showing  when 
the  time  came. 

The  time  came  just  east  of  the  Colville  River.  Kuna- 
luak was  walking  ahead  of  our  caravan  of  sleds  when 
suddenly  he  brought  us  to  a  halt.  I  had  been  watching 
the  land  no  less  carefully  than  he  and  I  found  later  that 
my  eyes  were  just  as  good,  but  I  then  lacked  the  exper- 
ience needed  for  identifying  what  I  saw.  I  had  seen  a 
group  of  little  specks  on  the  hillside,  but  there  were  so 
many  other  specks  elsewhere  that  I  had  given  these  no 
attention.  Kunaluak's  practiced  eye  recognized  them  as 
caribou,  and  when  we  stopped  our  field  glasses  confirmed 
him.  There  were  nine  animals,  one  a  bull  with  spreading 
antlers,  and  the  others  of  all  sizes  from  yearlings  up. 

It  was  important  for  us  to  get  these  caribou.  We  were 
not  short  of  fond  for  we  had  been  killing  seals,  but  we 
were  inadequately  dressed  for  the  enming  winter.  Stork- 
erson's  woolens  and  mine  did  very  well  for  September,  but 


HOW  I  LEARNED  TO  HUNT  CARIBOU      247 

against  Novemberjwe  needed  Jhe  warm  caribou  clothes 
which  the  Eskimo  women  would  make  for  us  if  we  only 
could  get  skins  out  of  which  they  could  make  them. 

We  held  a  council.  Kunaluak  suggested  that  Storker- 
son  and  I  should  go  with  the  Eskimo  woman,  child  and 
dog  teams  the  shortest  distance  towards  the  land  and 
make  camp  while  he  and  Ilavinirk  went  after  the  caribou, 
but  Ilavinirk  said  that  he  wanted  me  to  learn  caribou 
hunting  and  that  Storkerson  and  Mamayauk  could  easily 
make  camp.  Kunaluak  demurred  at  first,  saying  that  it 
was  very  important  that  no  mistake  should  be  made  and 
that  we  get  all  the  caribou.  Like  most  Eskimos,  he  was 
kindness  itself  and  was  obviously  of  a  divided  mind  be- 
tween the  courtesy  which  prompted  him  to  invite  me  to 
come  along  and  the  caution  which  urged  him  to  get  me  to 
stay  behind.     But  Ilavinirk  and  I  had  our  way. 

Just  as  we  were  separating  from  the  sledges,  Mamay- 
auk pointed  out  that  while  we  needed  especially  the  skins 
of  the  younger  caribou  for  our  inner  clothing  we  should 
also  secure  the  bull  if  possible,  for  his  thick  hide  was 
needed  for  the  soles  of  our  winter  boots.  As  we  walked 
along  Kunaluak  and  Ilavinirk  discussed  this  point.  They 
decided  to  leave  the  killing  of  the  bull  until  the  last  for  at 
this  season  bulls_are  very  thin  and  their  meat  is  considered 
nearly  unfit  for  use  (except  for  dog  food)  and  they  are 
valued  chiefly  fur  the  hide.  So  they  agreed  they  would 
shoot  the  other  eight  animals  and  the  bull  last. 

We  were  still  a  mile  away  from  the  caribou,  Kunaluak 
was  walking  rapidly  and  Ilavinirk  and  I  dropped  a  little 
behind.  He  now  told  me  that  he  had  laid  a  trap  for 
Kunaluak.  Both  of  them  had  agreed  not  to  shoot  the 
bull  until  the  last.  Ilavinirk  now  told  me  to  be  sure  to 
kill  the  bull  while  they  were  firing  at  the  others.    To  his 


248        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

mind  this  would  be  a  great  joke  on  Kunaluak,  for  he  had 
only  that  day  been  saying  that  he  had  known  white  men 
to  fire  many  hundred  shots  at  caribou  and  the  only  time 
he  had  known  them  to  hit  was  when  there  were  several 
caribou  in  a  band  and  when  a  bullet  intended  for  one  had 
struck  some  other  animal. 

Jt  j_s._sometimes  difficult  to  approach  caribou,  but  in 
this  case  it  was  easy  for  there  was  a  little  ridge  about 
three  hundred  yards  away  from  them.  We  crawled  to 
the  top  of  this  ridge  and  found  conditions  ideal,  except 
that  twilight  was  stealing  on  and  we  could  no  longer  see 
the  sights  of  our  rifles  plainly.  The  eight  caribou  were 
strung  out  almost  in  a  straight  line  at  right  angles  to 
us,  and  the  big  bull  was  at  some  distance  from  the  others. 
It  was  agreed  that  Kunaluak  should  begin  shooting  at 
the  right  hand  end  of  the  line  and  Ilavinirk  at  the  left 
hand  end.  In  this  conversation  the  two  Eskimos  agreed 
that  I  was  to  shoot  at  the  middle  of  the  line,  but  Ilavinirk 
gave  me  a  wink  to  remind  me  that  I  was  not  to  shoot  at 
the  line  at  all  but  at  the  old  bull. 

I  think  it  took  the  Eskimos  about  twenty  shots  all 
together  to  kill  six  out  of  the  eight  animals,  for  two 
escaped.  In  the  excitement  of  the  shooting  they  had  not 
been  watching  the  bull.  The  other  animals  had  been 
dashing  round  in  various  directions  and  in  the  half  dark 
it  would  not  have  been  strange  if  the  bull  which  originally 
had  been  some  distance  away  from  them  had  got  mixed 
up  in  the  band  without  being  noticed  for  in  that  light  his 
antlers  would  not  be  conspicuous.  When  we  went  up 
to  the  dead  caribou  and  found  the  bull  to  be  one  of  them, 
Kunaluak  said  that  Ilavinirk  must  have  killed  it  for  he 
felt  sure  that  he  had  never  aimed  at  any  animal  excepting 
a  young  one.    Ilavinirk  denied  having  shot  the  bull  and 


HOW  I  LEARNED  TO  HUNT  CARIBOU      249 

said  he  thought  I  had  done  so.  This  Kunaluak  evidently 
took  for  an  amiable  fib  on  the  part  of  Ilavinirk  and  so 
as  not  to  hurt  my  feelings  he  did  not  argue  against  it. 
But  when  it  came  to  the  skinning,  it  turned  out  that  the 
bull  had  a  peculiar  wound  that  could  not  have  been  caused 
by  their  black  powder  rifks_,and  must  have  been  caused 
by  my  more  powerful  soft-ncsed  bullet.  This  evidence 
compelled  Kunaluak  to  admit  that  I  had  killed  the  bull. 
But  he  seemed  to  consider  it  only  a  lucky  stray  shot. 

A  week  later  I  had  a  chance  about  forty  miles  east  of 
there  to  kill  a  caribou  when  I  was  off  hunting  alone.  In 
that  case  there  was  no  arguing  as  to  who  had  been  respon- 
sible. 

We  were  camped  on  the  coast  and  had  gone  hunting  in 
different  directions.  The  Eskimos  had  invited  me  to  go 
along  with  them  but  I  had  preferred  to  hunt  alone.  The 
weather  was  so  beautiful  that  it  was  impossible  to  con- 
ceive of  any  one  getting  lost.  The  topography,  too,  was 
simple.  The  mountains  were  in  sight  inland  and  from 
any  small  hill  the  coastline  could  plainly  be  made  out  even 
when  you  were  three  or  four  miles  inland.  Our  camp 
was  perched  conspicuously  on  a  high  cutbank  and  both 
the  tent  and  the  smoke  could  be  seen  from  afar.  Even 
a  sailor  ashore  could  not  get  lost  in  such  country  and  such 
weather.  It  seemed  to  me  a  good  chance  to  try  myself 
out  and  see  if  I  could  really  stand  on  my  own  feet. 

I  had  hun'ed  inland  seven  or  eight  miles  and  had  seen 
some  caribou  which  I  could  not  approach.  The  weather 
was  very  still,  they  heard  my  footfalls  half  a  mile  off 
and  v  .  •!-.  On  1  y~way  back  to  the  coast  I  noticed 
at  a  distance  of  two  or  three  miles  a  small  speck  moving 
over  the  snow.  My  glasses  showed  this  to  be  a  big  bull 
caribou.     He  was  traveling  in  a  straight  line.     I  watched 


250        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

him  carefully  for  about  a  mile  and  found  that  he  was 
going  to  pass  about  half  a  mile  from  me.  I  then  ran  as 
hard  as  I  could  to  a  place  I  judged  to  be  directly  in  his 
road  and  there  I  lay  down.  I  was  so  badly  out  of  breath 
that  had  he  come  along  directly  I  should  probably  have 
missed  him,  but  something  induced  him  to  stop  for  ten  or 
fifteen  minutes  and  when  he  finally  came  over  the  ridge 
about  two  hundred  yards  away  from  me  I  was  over  the 
worst  effects  of  my  running,  although  I  am  not  sure  that 
my  hand  was  really  steady.  The  magnificent  animal 
crumpled  up  with  the  first  bullet.  That  evening  Kunal- 
uak  did  not  argue  that  it  had  been  a  chance  shot7  but  I 
am  not  sure  but  it  was. 

From  this  time  on  I  did  my  own  hunting.  I  have 
usually  been  in  command  of  the  traveling  parties  and  it 
has  been  optional  with  me  what  to  do.  Because  hunting 
is  pleasanter  than  taking  care  of  the  dog  teams  or  building 
the  camps,  I  have  generally  assigned  the  hunting  to  my- 
self while  my  Eskimo  or  white  companions  have  had  to 
do  the  harder  and  more  difficult  work.  Still  this  has  been 
not  wholly  because  I  was  in  command,  but  partly  because 
many  years  of  hunting  have  made  me  an  expert  in  that 
line  of  work,  just  as  any  ordinary  person  can  become  an 
expert  in  anything  through  long  practice. 

When  you  consider  that  an  experienced  hunter  is  an 
expert  in  a  very  simple  task,  you  will  not  think  it  remark- 
able that  we  count  on  being  able  to  secure  at  least  three 
out  of  every  four  caribou  we  try  to  get.  The  same  pro- 
portion applies  to  seals  and  polar  bears.  This  is  why  we 
feel  no  hesitancy  in  making  journeys  of  hundreds  and 
even  thousands  of  miles  in  the  arctic  regions,  depending 
on  hunting  entirely  for  our  food.  If  you  read  of  travelers 
starving  to  death  up  there  it  will  be  through  some  special 


HOW  I  LEARNED  TO  HUNT  CARIBOU      251 

misfortune,  or  else  because  they  either  did  not  try  to  hunt 
or  else  did  not  know  well  the  technique  of  finding  and 
securing  game. 

A  common  mistake  about  caribou  is  to  suppose  that 
they  are  more  difficult  to  hunt  in  districts  where  they  are 
frequently  hunted  by  people  than  in  countries  where  they 
are  never  hunted  at  all.  I  find  there  is  no  such  difference. 
The  reason  is  simple.  They  have  one  great  enemy,  the 
wolf.  On  the  prairies  in  the  northern  half  of  Canada  and 
on  the  islands  to  the  north  of  Canada  there  are  many  mil- 
lions of  caribou.  Some  say  there  are  ten  million  all 
together  and  some  say  there  are  thirty  million.  In  these 
great  herds  there  must  be  born  every  year  anything  from 
two  million  to  six  million  calves.  The  number  of  caribou 
killed  by  human  beings  in  all  of  northern  Canada  is  far 
less  than  one  million  per  year.  Accordingly,  the  caribou 
would  increase  very  rapidly  were  it  not  for  the  wolves 
which  kill  several  times  as  many  as  do  the  human  hunters 
— Indian,  Eskimo  and  white.  Wolves  are  found  wherever 
caribou  are  found  and  the  caribou  are  in  continual  dread 
of  them.  They  are,  therefore,  almost  equally  harried  in 
countries  that  are  uninhabited  by  men  as  in  countries 
that  are  inhabited.  I  have,  accordingly,  found  that 
even  in  the  remote  new  islands  which  we  discovered  in 
19 1 5  caribou  are  about  as  difficult  to  approach  as  in 
northern  Alaska  or  on  the  Canadian  mainland  where  they 
are  continually  hunted  by  Eskimos. 

Apart  from  the  islands  actually  discovered  by  my 
expedition,  there  is  no  known  country  in  the  northern 
hemisphere  that  has  been  so  little  visited  as  Isachsen 
Land  in  north  latitude  79  °,  west  longitude  103  °.  We 
feel  sure  that  no  Eskimos  ever  saw  that  island.  From 
the  beginning  of  the  world  to  our  time  it  had  been  visited 


252        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

only  once — by  Captain  Isachsen  in  1901.  Isachsen  made 
a  hurried  sledge  trip  around  the  island.  The  journey 
took  him  about  a  week.  In  one  place  he  saw  some  cari- 
bou tracks  and  I  think  he  may  have  seen  some  caribou  at 
a  distance,  but  he  did  not  try  to  hunt  them.  The  next 
visitors  were  my  sledge  party  in  191 6  and  on  that  occasion 
we  saw  no  caribou  and  had  to  feed  ourselves  and  our  dogs 
entirely  on  seals. 

My  second  visit,  and  the  third  visit  of  human  beings 
to  the  island,  was  in  191 7.  We  were  then  on  the  most 
dangerous  adventure  that  has  ever  fallen  to  our  lot.  By 
the  road  we  had  to  travel  we  were  some  five  hundred  miles 
away  from  the  nearest  Eskimos  and  six  hundred  miles 
away  from  our  own  base  camp.  Four  of  us  had  been  on 
a  long  journey  out  on  the  moving  sea  ice  to  the  northwest. 
When  we  were  more  than  a  hundred  miles  northwest  from 
Isachsen  Land,  two  of  my  three  companions  were  taken 
seriously  ill.  We  turned  towards  shore  immediately  and 
it  was  a  hard  fight  to  make  land.  When  we  got  there 
after  a  struggle  of  two  weeks  we  found  ourselves  with  one 
man  so  sick  that  he  could  not  walk,  another  who  could 
barely  walk  but  was  of  no  use  otherwise,  and  with  two 
teams  of  dogs  that  were  exhausted  with  hard  work 
and  so  thin  from  short  rations  during  the  forced  march 
towards  shore  that  they  were  little  more  than  skeletons. 
It  had  been  my  pride  through  many  years  never  to  lose  a 
dog.     Furthermore,  I  was  e  igly  fond  of  every  one 

of  these  do^s  for  they  had  worked  for  me  faithfully  for 
years.  I  was  concerned  for  their  safety,  and  still  more 
concerned  for  the  safety  of  the  sick  men.  By  that  time, 
however,  my  confidence  in  our  ability  to  make  a  living 
in  the  Arctic  had  become  so  strong  througl  it  years 

of  experience  that  I  felt  more  worry  for  the  lives  of  the 


HOW  I  LEARNED  TO  HUNT  CARIBOU      253 

men  on  the  score  of  illness  than  fo>:  fear  they  might 
actually  die  of  hunger. 

But  the  first  day  on  Isachsen  Land  was  a  depressing 
contradiction  to  my  hopes  and  expectations.  The  one 
man  in  good  health  and  the  two  men  who  were  sick  had 
to  make  their  way  as  best  they  could  along  the  coast  while 
I  hunted  inland  parallel  to  their  course.  I  walked  that 
day  twenty  miles  across  one  of  the  very  few  stretches  of 
entirely  barren  land  that  I  have  seen  in  the  Arctic. 
Under  foot  was  gravel  without  a  blade  of  grass.  Much 
of  the  land  was  lightly  covered  with  snow  as  in  other 
typical  arctic  lands  in  winter,  and  I  looked  in  vain  in  the 
snow  for  track  or  other  sign  of  any  living  thing. 

That  evening  my  men  were  depressed  partly  because 
of  their  illness  and  also  because  it  looked  as  if  we  had 
at  last  come  into  a  region  as  barren  as  many  people  think 
the  polar  countries  generally  are.  It  was  clear  that  if  we 
saw  game  the  next  day  we  would  simply  have  to  have  it. 
Where  game  is  plentiful,  you  may  lose  one  chance  and 
soon  get  another;  but  where  it  is  scarce,  you  must  not 
allow  any  opportunity  to  slip  through  your  fingers. 

I  am  telling  this  particular  hunting  story  rather  than 
any  other  to  illustrate  the  principle  of  how  you  must  hunt 
caribou  in  the  polar  regions  if  it  is  essential  that  you  shall 
get  every  animal  you  see.  It  certainly  was  essential  in 
this  case,  for  I  wanted  not  only  to  stave  off  immediate 
hunger  but  to  secure  meat  enough  so  we  could  camp  in  one 
place  for  several  weeks  to  give  the  sick  men  a  chance  to 
become  well. 

Our  second  day  on  Isachsen  Land  the  men  again  fol- 
lowed the  coast  line  with  the  sledges,  cutting  across  the 
shortest  distance  from  point  to  point  while  I  walked  a 
much   longer  course   inland.     I   had   gone   but   a   few 


254        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

miles  when  I  came  upon  the  tracks  of  a  band  of  caribou. 
You  can  seldom  be  sure  of  the  minimum  number  in  a 
band  from  the  tracks  if  there  are  more  than  ten  animals, 
for  caribou  have  a  way  of  stepping  in  each  other's  foot- 
prints. There  are  always  likely  to  be  more  animals  in  a 
band  than  you  have  been  able  to  make  out  from  the 
tracks. 

The  trail  showed  that  these  caribou  were  traveling  into 
the  wind  as  they  usually  do.  There  were  only  light  airs 
and  the  snow  had  on  it  a  crust  that  broke  underfoot  with 
a  crunching  noise.  Under  such  conditions  the  band  were 
likely  to  hear  me  four  or  five  hundred  yards  away.  The 
country  now  was  a  rolling  prairie — not  barren  gravel  as 
yesterday.  It  was  impossible  to  tell  which  ridge  might 
hide  the  caribou  from  me,  so  instead  of  following  the  trail 
ahead  I  went  back  along  it  for  about  half  a  mile  studying 
the  tracks  to  see  just  how  fast  they  had  been  moving. 
They  had  been  traveling  in  a  leisurely  way  and  feeding 
here  and  there.  I  estimated  their  average  rate  of  pro- 
gress would  not  be  more  than  three  or  four  miles  per  day. 
I  could  not  rely  on  this,  however,  for  a  wolf  may  turn  up 
any  time  and  begin  a  pursuit  which  takes  a  band  twenty- 
five  or  fifty  miles  away.  Should  a  wolf  pass  to  windward 
of  them  so  that  they  got  his  smell  without  his  knowing 
about  them,  they  would  be  likely  to  run  from  five  to  ten 
miles. 

When  I  had  made  up  my  mind  that  these  caribou  were 
moving  slowly,  I  went  to  the  top  of  a  nearby  hill  and 
through  my  glasses  studied  the  landscape  carefully. 
With  good  luck  I  might  have  seen  some  of  them  on  top 
of  some  hill  and  the  problem  would  have  become  definite. 
But  I  watched  for  half  an  hour  and  saw  nothing.  Clearly 
they  were  either  feeding  in  some  low  place  or  else  they 


HOW  I  LEARNED  TO  HUNT  CARIBOU      255 

were  lying  down,  for  caribou  are  like  cattle  in  their  habit 
of  lying  down  for  long  periods.  I  now  commenced  a 
cautious  advance,  not  along  the  actual  trail  but  crisscros- 
sing it  from  high  hilltop  to  high  hilltop,  hoping  to  get  a 
view  of  the  animals  while  they  were  at  least  half  a  mile 
from  me  and  while  I  was  beyond  the  range  of  their  eye- 
sight, for  they  cannot  see  a  man  under  even  the  most 
favorable  conditions  farther  off  than  half  a  mile.  Under 
ordinary  conditions  they  would  not  see  you  much  beyond 
a  quarter  of  a  mile. 

Finally  I  saw  the  band  lying  quietly  on  some  flat  land. 
There  was  no  cover  to  enable  me  to  approach  safely 
within  five  hundred  yards  and  that  is  too  far  for  good 
shooting.  I  thought  these  might  be  the  only  caribou  in 
the  whole  country.  We  had  thirteen  hungry  dogs  and 
two  sick  men,  and  now  that  I  had  a  large  band  before  me 
it  was  my  business  to  get  enough  food  at  one  time  to  en- 
able us  to  spend  at  that  place  two  or  three  weeks  while 
the  men  had  a  chance  to  regain  their  health  and  the  dogs 
to  regain  their  flesh  and  strength. 

On  a  calm  day  when  caribou  can  hear  you  farther  than 
you  can  shoot,  there  is  only  one  method  of  hunting.  You 
must  study  their  movements  from  afar  until  you  make  up 
your  mind  which  direction  they  are  going.  Then  you 
must  walk  in  a  wide  curve  around  them  until  you  are  in 
the  locality  towards  which  they  are  moving  and  well 
beyond  earshot.  This  takes  judgment,  for  they  usually 
travel  nearly  or  quite  into  the  wind  and  you  must  not 
allow  them  to  scent  you.  You,  therefore,  have  to  choose 
a  place  which  you  think  is  near  enough  to  their  course  so 
that  they  will  pass  within  shooting  distance,  and  still 
not  directly  enough  in  front  so  that  they  can  smell 
you. 


256        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

On  this  occasion  the  glaring  light  on  the  snow  had  been 
so  hard  on  my  eyes  that  I  did  not  feel  they  were  in  perfect 
condition,  and  no  one  can  shoot  well  if  his  eyes  are  not 
right.  Unless  there  is  a  change  of  wind  caribou  are  not 
likely  to  turn  their  course  back  along  the  trail  by  which 
they  have  come.  I  accordingly  selected  a  hill  across 
which  they  had  walked  that  morning  and  half  a  mile  away 
from  where  they  now  were.  On  the  top  of  this  hill  where 
I  could  see  them,  although  they  could  not  see  me  (because 
my  eyes  were  better  than  theirs)  I  lay  down,  covered  my 
head  with  a  canvas  hunting  bag  to  keep  the  sun  away,  and 
went  to  sleep.  Sleeping  is  the  best_gossil 
irg  time,  but  my  object  now  was  not  only  to  pass  the  time 
until  the  caribou  began  moving  but  also  to  get  my  eyes 
into  perfect  condition. 

When  you  go  to  sleep  at  twenty  below  zero  you  have  in 
the  temperature  an  automatic  alarm  clock.  My  clothes 
were  amply  warm  enough  to  keep  me  comfortable  while  I 
was  awake,  but  I  knew  that  when  I  went  to  sleep  my 
circulation  would  slow  down.  This  reduces  the  1 
temperature  and  the  same  weather  that  will  not  chill 
when  you  are  awake  will  chill  you  enough  to  wake  you 
from  a  sleep. 

In  this  case  the  chill  woke  me  in  about  half  an  hour 
to  an  unpleasant  situation.  A  fog  had  set  in  and  I  could 
not  see  the  caribou,  nor  had  I  any  means  of  knowing 
whether  they  were  still  lying  down  or  whether  they  had 
started  to  move.  If  this  had  been  a  good  game  country, 
I  might  have  taken  chances  on  advancing  through  the  fog 
a  little,  but  I  was  so  impressed  with  the  possibility  that 
these  were  the  only  animals  within  a  hundred  miles  that 
carelessness  was  not  to  be  considered.  At  this  time  of  year 
we  had  twenty-four  hours  of   daylight.     The   fog  was 


HOW  I  LEARNED  TO  HUNT  CARIBOU      257 

bound  to  lift  sooner  or  later  and  whenever  it  did  I  would 
commence  the  hunt  over  again. 

The  fog  did  lift  in  about  two  hours  and  I  did  have  to 
commence  the  hunt  all  over  again,  for  the  caribou  were 
gone.  I  was  to  the  north  of  them  and  I  felt  sure  that  they 
had  not  gone  by  near  me;  so  they  must  have  gone  east, 
west  or  south.  I  was  probably  so  near  them  that  I  could 
not  with  safety  go  on  top  of  any  of  the  adjoining  hills,  so  I 
went  back  north  half  a  mile  and  climbed  a  high  hill  there. 
From  that  hill  I  saw  nothing  and  went  half  a  mile  to  one 
side  to  another  hill.  Then  I  saw  the  caribou.  They 
were  now  feeding  half  a  mile  south  of  where  they  had  been 
when  the  fog  covered  them  up.  In  the  meantime  the 
breeze  had  stiffened  enough  so  that  now  there  was  no 
longer  danger  of  my  being  heard.  I  did  not,  therefore, 
have  to  circle  them  and  lie  in  wait  in  front  but  could 
follow  up  directly  behind. 

Eventually  I  got  within  about  three  hundred  yards. 
But  I  wanted  to  get  within  two  hundred,  so  I  lay  still  and 
waited  for  them  to  move  into  a  more  favorable  locality. 
During  my  wait  an  exceedingly  thick  fog  bank  rolled  up, 
but  with  it  the  wind  did  not  slacken.  Under  cover  of 
this  fog  I  felt  safe  in  crawling  ahead  a  hundred  yards, 
for  I  knew  that  I  could  see  through  the  fog  quite  as  well 
as  the  animals  and  that  they  could  not  hear  me  because  of 
the  wind.  The  reason  I  had  not  approached  them  in  the 
previous  fog  was  that  the  weather  then  had  been  nearly 
calm  and  they  would  have  heard  me. 

At  two  hundred  yards  I  was  just  able  to  make  out  the 
outline  of  the  nearest  caribou.  I  did  not  dare  to  go  closer 
and,  of  course,  I  could  not  begin  shooting  with  only  one 
or  two  animals  in  sight  where  I  wanted  to  get  them  all. 
I  had  before  now  counted  them  carefully.     There  were 


258        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

twenty-one,  which  I  estimated  would  be  enough  to  feed 
our  men  and  dogs  between  two  or  three  weeks,  giving 
them  a  chance  to  recuperate. 

After  about  half  an  hour  the  fog  began  gradually  to 
clear  and  in  another  half  hour  I  could  see  all  the  animals. 
I  was  near  the  top  of  a  hill  and  they  were  in  a  hollow, 
the  nearest  of  them  about  a  hundred  and  fifty  yards 
away  and  the  farthest  about  three  hundred. 

In  winter  the  ground  in  any  cold  country  will  split  in 
what  we  call  frost  cracks.  These  are  cracks  in  the  frozen 
surface  of  what  in  summer  is  mud.  They  are  ordinarily 
only  half  an  inch  or  so  wride  but  I  have  seen  cracks  four 
or  five  inches  wide.  These  cracks  form  when  the  mer- 
cury is  dropping  and  with  a  noise  that  resembles  a  rifle 
shot.  Under  the  same  conditions  the  ice  on  the  small 
lakes  cracks  similarly.  These  loud  noises  are  so 
familiar  to  the  caribou  and  the  report  of  a  rifle  is  so 
similar  that  the  mere  sound  of  a  rifle  does  not  scare 
them.  Of  course,  we  have  smokeless  powder  so  they 
cannot  see  where  the  shots  come  from.  What  does  scare 
them  is  the  whistle  of  the  bullet  and  the  thud  as  it  strikes 
the  ground.  It  is  instinctive  with  all  animals  to  run 
directly  away  from  the  source  of  any  noise  that  frightens 
them.  It  is  another  instinct  of  caribou  when  they  are 
alarmed  to  run  towards  the  center  of  the  herd.  A  Jband 
that  has  been  scattered  feeding  will  bunch  up  when  they 
take  fright.  When  3'ou  know  these  two  principles,  it  is 
obvious  that  the  first  caribou  to  kill  is  the  one  farthest 
away  from  you.  On  some  occasions  when  I  have  been 
unable  to  get  within  good  shooting  distance  of  a  band, 
I  have  commenced  by  firing  a  few  shots  into  a  hill  on 
the  other  side  of  them,  hoping  that  the  noise  of  the 
striking  bullets   would   scare   them   towards   me.     Fre- 


HOW  I  LEARNED  TO  HUNT  CARIBOU      259 

quently  it  works.  On  this  occasion,  however,  I  merely 
took  careful  aim  at  an  animal  about  three  hundred  yards 
away.  It  dropped  so  instantaneously  that  although  the 
sound  of  the  bullet  striking  it  induced  the  other  caribou 
to  look  up,  they  recognized  no  sign  of  real  danger.  They 
were,  however,  alert  and  when  they  saw  the  second 
caribou  fall  they  ran  together  into  a  group  and  moved 
somewhat  towards  me.  I  now  shot  animals  on  the  outer 
margin  of  the  group  and  as  each  fell,  the  others  would 
run  a  little  away  from  that  one.  Their  retreat  in  any 
direction  was  stopped  by  killing  the  foremost  animal  in 
the  retreat,  whereupon  the  band  would  turn  in  the  oppo- 
site direction. 

It  would  not  have  been  difficult  for  me  to  kill  the 
whole  band  alone,  but  I  was  not  shooting  alone.  From 
a  point  somewhat  above  and  behind  me  I  could  hear 
other  shots,  and  some  animals  I  was  not  aiming  at  were 
dropping.  Without  looking  around  I  knew  what  this 
meant.  My  companions  traveling  along  shore  on  the  ice 
had  seen  the  caribou  and  had  waited  for  some  time  until 
they  began  to  fear  that  I  might  have  missed  the  band. 
The  two  sick  men  had  then  been  left  behind  in  camp 
while  their  Eskimo  companion  had  come  inland  to  try 
to  get  the  caribou.  When  he  got  near  he  saw  that  I  was 
approaching  them  and  very  wisely  did  not  interfere. 
There  is  nothing  so  likely  to  spoil  a  caribou  hunt  as  two 
hunters  whose  plans  conflict.  Even  when  they  have  a 
chance  to  consult  at  the  beginning  of  the  hunt,  two  men 
are  less  likely  to  be  successful  than  one.  For  one  thing, 
caribou  may  see  a  black  dot  on  the  landscape  and  take 
no  warning  from  it,  but  if  they  see  two  black  dots  and 
later  notice  that  they  are  either  closer  together  or  farther 
apart  than  they  were  a  moment  before,  this  makes  a 


26o        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

danger  signal  which  they  understand.  That  is  the  main 
reason  why  I  always  hunt  alone.  If  there  are  two 
hunters  to  go  out  from  the  same  camp  on  any  given 
day,  they  should  go  in  opposite  directions.  That  way 
they  double  the  chance  of  finding  game  and  each  has  a 
fair  chance  of  getting  the  animals  he  does  find. 

On  our  journeys  we  never  kill  more  animals  than  we 
need,  but  in  this  case  we  needed  the  whole  twenty-one. 
The  Eskimo  and  I  went  down  to  the  ice  with  my  hunting 
bag  filled  with  the  tongues  of  the  .-caxihou.  This  gave 
the  sick  men  a  more  appetizing  meat  than  they  had  had 
for  a  long  time.  The  dogs  had  to  wait  for  their  food 
until  we  were  able  to  move  camp  right  to  where  the 
caribou  had  been  shot.  Although  they  were  thin  and 
tired,  they  became  so  excited  with  the  smell  of  the  fresh 
killed  caribou  which  they  got  from  our  clothes  that  they 
pulled  towards  shore  as  if  they  had  been  well  fed  and 
of  full  strength. 

On  the  hill  from  which  I  had  shot  the  caribou  we 
pitched  camp.  During  the  next  two  weeks  the  invalids 
rapidly  gained  in  health.  We  called  the  place  Camp 
Hospital.  Few  hospitals  have  ever  been  more  successful. 
When  we  left  it  three  weeks  later,  the  dogs  were  fat  and 
the  men  well. 


CHAPTER  II 

HOW   I  LEARNED  TO  HUNT   SEALS 

Some  Eskimos  make  a  living  almo.  »  •  :< -.ly  by  hunting 
seals,  and  I  have  had  to  do  the  same  occasionally.  The 
seal  is  the  most  useful  of  animals  because  it  furnishes 
all  3^cu  really  need  for  living  in  comfort. 

The  lean  and  fat  of  the  seal,  make  together  a  diet  upon 
which  whole  groups  of  Eskimos  live  in  good  health  to 
a  reasonably  old  age.  On  some  of  my  later  expeditions 
my  white  companions  and  I  have  lived  exclusively  on 
seals  for  months  at  a  time.  Some  people  do  not  like  the 
meat  at  first  just  because  it  differs  considerably  from  any 
meat  with  which  they  are  familiar;  but  you  gradually 
get  to  like  it,  and  the  longer  you  live  on  it  the  better  you 
like  it.  You  may  be  dreadfully  tired  of  seal  after  three 
weeks,  or  even  three  months,  but  I  never  saw  any  one 
who  was  tired  of  it  after  three  years.  It  is  in  living  with 
the  Eskimos  on  seals  as  it  is  in  living  with'  the  Chinese 
on  rice  that  no  matter  how  much  you  dislike  it  at  first, 
you  are  likely  eventually  to  become  as  fond  of  it  as  they 
are  themselves. 

In  addition  to  giving  meat  and  fat  for  food  the  seal 
furnishes  fat  for  fuel.  Many  thousands  of  Eskimos  have 
no  other  fuel  in  winter,  and  it  does  them  very  well. 
They  burn  the  fat  in  stone  lamps  made  for  the  purpose. 
These  are  carefully  trimmed  and  should  not  smoke.  A 
woman  is  considered  a  very  bad  housekeeper  if  you  can 
notice  the  smell  of  lamp  smoke  in  her  house  or  see 

261 


262        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

stains  of  lamp  soot  on  her  hands,  or  on  anything  in  the 
house.  The  first  real  Eskimo  house  in  which  I  lived  (a 
Tuktuyaktok)  usually  had  four  seal  oil  lamps  burning, 
maintaining  the  temperature  of  the  interior,  day  and 
night,  steadily  between  70  °  and  80  °.  We  had  a  wood 
stove  which  we  used  for  cooking  only,  but  many  Eskimos 
cook  entirely  over  their  lamps.  This  serves  well,  but 
takes  a  little  longer. 

Besides  food  and  fuel,  the  seal  furnishes  clothing.  The, 
Eskimos  use  water  boots  in  summer  that  are  made  en- 
tirely of  seal  skin,  and  in  winter  they  use  caribou  skin 
boots  which  in  some  cases  have  seal  skin  soles.  Rain 
coats  are  made  of  seal  skin  and  so  are  mittens  intended 
to  be  used  in  handling  fishnets  or  anything  that  is  wet. 
Coats  and  trousers  for  winter  may  be  made  of  seal  skin, 
but  this  is  seldom  done  except  when  caribou  are  scarce. 

Whalers,  traders  and  explorers  have  for  a  century  been 
in  contact  with  the  Eskimos  in  Greenland,  even  as  far 
north  as  Smith  Sound  where  the  most  remote  of  them 
live.  These  people  buy  canvas  and  other  tents  from 
traders  and  so  do  all  the  Eskimos  of  Alaska — and,  indeed, 
all  the  Eskimos  in  the  world  except  some  small  groups 
that  are  especially  inaccessible  because  they  are  in  the 
middle  of  the  north  coast  of  North  America  halfway 
between  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  oceans.  These  small 
groups  still  use  skin  tents  and  they  are  of  seal  skin  in 
districts  where  seals  are  more  abundant  than  caribou. 

Lastly,  seal  si: ins  furnish  material  for  boats.  .  The 
small  seals  arc  used  for  the  kayaks  and  the  big  seals  for 
the  umiaks. 

I  like  to  travel  with  Eskimo  companions,  but  I  never 
liked  to  feel  that  I  was  wholly  dependent  upon  them. 
Being  helpless  is  never  pleasant.     To  become  self-sup- 


A  Woman  Fishing  Through  the  Ice 


f 

Bringing  Home  a  Seal 


HOW  I  LEARNED  TO  HUNT  SEALS        263 

porting,  nothing  was  so  important  as  to  learn  seal  hunt- 
ing, for  then  I  could  supply  myself  with  food,  fuel, 
clothing  and,  if  need  be,  material  for  a  tent  or  a  boat. 

It  is  said  that  experience  is  the  b.  t  teacher;  but  she 
is  a  slow  and  painful  teacher.  Any  one  at  all  intelligent 
or  thoughtful  can  learn  without  experience,  or  rather 
from  the  experience  of  others.  That  is  why  we  have  so 
many  schools  and  that  is  why  they  are  so  useful.  I  am 
a  great  believer  in  schools  and  like  to  learn  things  by 
being  taught.  I  therefore  asked  the  Eskimos  to  explain 
to  me  just  how  they  hunted  seals.  They  told  me  clearly 
and  fully.  If  I  were  to  repeat  what  they  said,  I  should 
give  a  description  of  seal  hunting  from  which  any  one 
could  learn  the  principles  so  well  that  he  could  hunt  seals 
successfully  the  first  time  he  found  himself  in  the  polar 
regions.  But  I  found  later  that  while  the  Eskimos  had 
told  me  the  whole  truth  they  had  told  me  a  great  deal 
more  than  the  truth.  They  are  a  kind  and  charming 
people;  but  they  are  very  superstitious,  and  about  half 
the  things  they  told  me  I  would  have  to  do  in  order  to 
hunt  seals  successfully  I  have  since  found  were  pure 
superstition.  Seal  hunting  is  very  much  simpler  than  any 
Eskimo  will  ever  tell  you;  for  he  tells  you  how  he  hunts 
seals,  and  half  the  things  he  does  while  hunting  are  done 
merely  because  his  father  and  grandfather  before  him 
always  did  them  that  way. 

So  instead  of  telling  how  Eskimos  hunt  seals,  I  shall 
tell  how  I  do  it  and  how  the  other  white  men  do  it  who 
(on  my  various  expeditions)  have  accompanied  me  when 
we  were  living  on  seals. 

On  my  first  expedition  (1906-07)  I  was  in  a  fishing 
country  and  never  saw  a  caribou  or  a  seal.  On  my 
second  expedition  (1908-12)  I  was  nearly  the  whole  time 


264        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

in  a  caribou  country  and  lived  mainly  on  caribou. 
Furthermore,  my  Eskimo  companions  at  that  time  had 
been  brought  up  as  caribou  hunters,  and  if  they  knew 
how  to  hunt  seals  they  did  not  care  much  about  it.  One 
of  them,  Natkusiak,  came  from  Cape  Prince  of  Wales  in 
Alaska  and  had  learned  sealing  as  a  boy.  He  had  ex- 
plained to  me  how  it  was  done  and  I  felt  sure  I  could  do 
it  whenever  the  need  arose.  But  the  need  never  came 
until  in  May,  19 12,  when  he  and  I  were  making  a 
1000-mile  sledge  journey  from  Langton  Bay  to  Point 
Barrow.  We  were  on  the  last  lap — the  400-mile  stretch 
between  Herschel  and  Barrow. 

We  could  have  carried  almost  enough  groceries  to  last 
us  the  trip  from  Herschel  to  Barrow  but  we  did  not  like 
to  because  such  a  heavy  load  would  have  lessened  our 
speed.  So  we  took  only  about  one-quarter  of  what  we 
needed,  expecting  to  live  mainly  by  hunting.  This  was 
the  best  time  of  the  year  for  sealing  on  top  of  the  ice,  and 
Natkusiak  assured  me  he  would  be  able  to  get  all  the 
seals  necessary  to  feed  ourselves  and  our  dogs. 

But  soon  after  we  started  west  from  Herschel  Island 
he  began  to  complain  about  a  pain  in  one  of  his  fingers. 
This  developed  into  a  felon  and  the  pain  became  so 
intense  that  he  could  not  sleep  at  night.  He  could  not 
even  ride  on  the  sled  daytimes  for  the  jarring  hurt  too 
much.  Delay  was  out  of  the  question  for  we  had  to 
reach  Toint  Barrow  before  the  summer  heat  turned  into 
water  the  sea  ice  we  were  traveling  over,  so  he  used  to 
walk  along  slowly  and  as  carefully  as  he  could,  carry- 
ing his  afflicted  left  hand  in  front  of  him  supported  by 
Ins  right.  Crippled  as  he  was  he  could  not  hunt  seals,  so 
I  had  to  do  it. 

I  felt  I  understood  the  theory  and  that  I  should  be 


HOW  I  LEARNED  TO  HUNT  SEALS        265 

able  to  kill  my  first  seal.  The  principle  was  simple.  You 
had  to  go  on  the  assumption  that  the  seal  would  see  you 
when  you  were  far  away.  Your  task  was  to  approach 
him  slowly,  crawling  along  the  ice  like  a  seal  and 
making  him  think  all  the  while  that  you  were  another 
seal.  Natkusiak  had  explained  to  me  both  by  words  and 
mimicry  how  this  should  be  done.  But  I  did  not  want  to 
make  any  mistake  with  my  first  seal,  and  thinking  that 
possibly  the  seals  themselves  might  know  even  better 
than  Natkusiak  how  a  seal  acts,  I  decided  to  find  out  from 
them  just  how  they  do  act. 

That  was  a  simple  matter.  The  eyesight  of  seals  is 
not  very  good,  and  when  they  are  lying  sunning  them- 
selves on  the  level  ice  they  cannot  see  you  much  beyond 
four  hundred  yards.  With  this  in  mind  I  watched  for 
seals  as  we  traveled,  climbing  on  top  of  ice  hummocks 
now  and  then  and  examining  the  ocean  with  my  field 
glasses.  Finally  we  saw  a  seal  lying  on  the  ice  ahead  of 
us.  We  made  camp  about  half  a  mile  from  him.  I  then 
went  to  the  top  of  an  ice  hummock  and  studied  him 
carefully  through  my  glasses.  Previous  to  this  I  had 
often  watched  seals  and  had  checked  them  with  my  watch 
to  find  out  how  long  at  a  time  they  sleep.  I  found  that 
they  take  short  naps,  but  that  their  waking  spells  be- 
tween the  naps  are  even  shorter.  I  learned  that  while 
on  top  of  the  ice  the  average  Alaskan  seal  sleeps  about 
seven  times  as  much  as  he  stays  awake.  The  average 
length  of  his  naps  was  about  thirty-five  seconds  and  the 
average  length  of  the  waking  periods  between  was  about 
five  seconds. 

It  may  seem  strange  to  those  unfamiliar  with  the  lives 
of  the  arctic  seals  that  they  should  sleep  so  fitfully. 
Nothing  else  would  do,  however.    If  they  slept  thirty 


266        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

minutes  at  a  time  instead  of  thirty  seconds,  there  soon 
would  be  no  seals  left.  They  would  all  get  killed  and 
eaten  by  the  polar  bears. 

The  polar  bear  is  the  great  enemy  of  the  seal.  He 
is  white  in  color  and  difficult  for  the  seal  to  see  at  a 
distance.  He  is  also  a  very  skillful  hunter.  Eternal 
watchfulness  is,  therefore,  the  price  of  a  seal's  being  able 
to  live  at  all.  Accordingly,  he  usually  goes  to  sleep  on 
large  expanses  of  level  ice  so  as  to  give  the  bear  no 
opportunity  to  creep  up  behind  the  cover  of  a  hummock. 
Then  after  the  briefest  nap,  during  which  the  seal  sleeps 
like  a  small  boy  on  a  lawn,  he  lifts  his  head  as  high  as 
he  can  above  the  ice  (about  eighteen  inches)  and  surveys 
the  whole  horizon  carefully.  Having  satisfied  himself 
that  nothing  dangerous  is  in  sight,  he  takes  another  nap. 
While  the  average  nap  is  thirty  seconds,  the  seal  may  lift 
his  head  suddenly  after  five  seconds  of  pretended  sleep, 
or  possibly  after  a  real  nap  of  fifteen  seconds.  They 
seldom  sleep  more  than  a  minute  at  a  time,  but  north  of 
Prince  Patrick  Island,  where  we  never  saw  polar  bear 
tracks,  I  have  known  them  to  sleep  five  or  even  ten 
minutes  at  a  time. 

All  these  things  I  had  heard  already,  but  I  wanted 
further  confirmation  of  them  and  I  wanted  to  learn 
certain  finer  details  of  how  to  act.  Watching  the  seal 
through  my  glasses,  I  noticed  that  he  was  seldom  still  for 
a  moment.  He  was  continually  squirming  and  rubbing 
himself  against  the  ice  as  if  he  were  itching.  Occasion- 
ally he  would  scratch  his  side  with  one  of  his  front  flip- 
pers. The  front  flippers  are  short  and  inconvenient  for 
that  purpose,  but  the  hind  flippers  are  long  and  flexible 
and  he  can  curl  himself  up  in  such  a  way  that  he  can 
scratch  with  them  as  far  up  as  his  waist.     I  concluded, 


HOW  I  LEARNED  TO  HUNT  SEALS        267 

therefore,  (and  long  experience  has  verified  it)  that  when 
I  came  to  play  seal  it  would  be  advisable  for  me  to  squirm 
and  scratch  myself  as  I  had  seen  him  doing. 

When  my  hour  of  study  was  over,  I  began  the  hunt 
with  every  rule  in  mind  which  Natkusiak  had  given  me 
and  not  forgetful  of  the  things  I  had  just  learned  by 
watching.  Knowing  that  he  could  not  see  more  than  at 
most  five  hundred  yards,  I  walked  to  a  spot  directly  to 
the  leeward  of  him  five  hundred  yards  away.  I  now  saw 
that  the  ice  between  him  and  me  was  not  quite  level. 
This  would  be  bad,  for  if  he  once  saw  me  I  must  keep  in 
sight  all  the  time.  If  I  had  any  hollows  in  the  ice  to 
crawl  over,  I  should  disappear  from  his  sight  occasionally 
and  this  might  scare  him.  I  therefore  stepped  a  few 
yards  to  one  side  and  examined  the  ice  between  him  and 
me  with  the  glasses.  This  was  still  hummocky,  so  I 
kept  going  a  little  more  to  one  side  until  I  found  that  all 
the  ice  in  a  direct  line  to  the  seal  was  level.  Then  I  com- 
menced the  approach. 

It  may  seem  that  it  would  be  advisable  to  dress  in 
white  clothing  for  this  sort  of  hunt.  That  would  be  the 
worst  thing  you  could  do.  The  seal  is  continually  watch- 
ing for  polar  bears.  If  he  sees  something  that  is  suspicious 
and  white,  he  takes  it  to  be  a  polar  bear  and  dives  into 
his  water  hole  at  once.  The  seals  themselves  are  grey 
and  when  they  have  just  come  out  of  the  water  their  sleek 
sides  look  black  at  a  distance.  The  hunter  may,  there- 
fore, wear  any  color  between  grey  and  black.  I  have 
used  blue  and  it  seems  the  seal  cannot  distinguish  between 
this  and  black.  Green  I  have  never  tried  because  I  never 
had  green  clothes,  nor  have  I  heard  of  it  being  tried. 
Eskimos  have  told  me  that  red  will  not  do,  and  that  seems 
reasonable.     I  have  tried  to  get  at  seals  when  dressed  in 


268        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

white,  but  have  never  succeeded  except  when  I  have  been 
able  to  shield  myself  behind  some  cover. 

So  long  as  you  are  more  than  three  hundred  yards 
away  from  the  seal  you  need  not  be  careful.  He  might 
see  you  at  four  hundred  yards  if  you  were  upright,  but 
you  should  begin  crawling  somewhat  before  the  four 
hundred-yard  mark  is  reached.  I  crawl  ahead  on  all 
fours  while  he  is  asleep,  and  when  he  wakes  up  I  drop 
flat  instantly  and  remain  motionless  until  he  goes  to  sleep 
again.  This  sort  of  approach  will  do  until  you  are  about 
three  hundred  yards  away,  but  after  that  you  must  be 
more  careful  for  he  now  may  see  you  at  any  time. 

When  I  felt  myself  well  within  the  seal's  range  of 
vision,  I  began  to  crawl  ahead  seal-fashion,  which  prac- 
tically means  snake-fashion.  I  moved  as  rapidly  as  I 
could  while  he  slept  and  I  stopped  motionless  while  he 
was  awake  until  finally,  at  a  distance  of  175  yards,  he 
saw  me. 

It  was  easy  to  tell  when  the  seal  first  saw  me.  He 
stiffened  up  suddenly,  lifted  his  head  a  little  higher  than 
ordinary  and  crawled  a  foot  or  two  nearer  his  water  hole 
so  as  to  be  able  to  dive  instantly  if  necessary.  Being 
now  in  what  he  thought  a  safe  position  himself  and  con- 
sidering me  so  far  away  that  there  was  no  immediate 
danger,  he  watched  me  carefully.  Had  I  remained 
motionless  for  two  or  three  minutes,  he  would  have  be- 
come restive,  and  in  a  few  minutes  more  he  would  have 
dived  into  his  hole,  for  he  knew  very  well  that  no  real 
seal  would  remain  motionless  for  long.  Accordingly,  I 
waited  until  he  had  been  watching  me  about  half  a 
minute,  which  is  the  av( ,  '  1  >ing  spell  of  a  seal.     I 

then  did  my  best  to  act  like  a  seal  waking  up.  I  lifted 
my  head  about  eighi  iches  above  the  ice,  looked 


HOW  I  LEARNED  TO  HUNT  SEALS        269 

around  in  all  directions,  and  moved  as  if  I  were  squirm- 
ing seal-fashion  on  the  ice.  After  spending  about  five 
seconds  looking  around,  I  al lowed  my  head  to  drop  on 
the  ice.  I  then  counted  ten  of  my  breaths  and  raised 
my  head  a  second  time,  dropping  it  after  a  suitable  inter- 
val. Occasionally  I  would  flex  my  legs  at  the  knee  so 
as  to  imitate  a  seal  scratching  with  his  hind  flippers. 

In  about  ten  or  fifteen  minutes  of  this  sort  of  acting 
I  had  the  seal  convinced  that  I  was  another  seal.  After 
that  the  whole  thing  was  easy.  I  have  since  found  by 
long  experience  that  most  of  the  seals  you  lose  are  lost 
at  this  critical  time.  It  may  be  that  they  are  of  a 
specially  nervous  temperament,  perhaps  they  have  had 
a  narrow  escape  from  a  bear  just  recently,  or  possibly 
they  may  have  been  lying  up  on  the  ice  so  long  that  they 
are  hungry  and  ready  to  dive  into  the  sea  in  search  of 
the  next  meal.  I  should  say  that  one  seal  out  of  four 
will  dive  at  this  stage,  no  matter  how  good  a  seal  hunter 
you  are.  To  lose  a  seal  that  way  is  nobody's  fault.  If 
you  lose  him  thereafter,  it  is  your  fault  or  because  some 
accident  happens.  It  may  be  that  a  sudden  gust  of  wind 
flaps  your  clothing  so  that  he  notices  it.  There  is  nothing 
about  a  real  seal  that  flaps  in  the  wind,  so  he  will  rec- 
ognize this  as  a  danger  sign.  Possibly  you  may  make 
some  loud  noise  by  carelessly  breaking  a  snag  of  thin 
ice.  Still,  that  should  do  no  more  than  make  him  sus- 
picious over  again  for  seals  do  break  ice  snags  sometimes, 
and  a  few  minutes  of  playing  seal  should  put  him  at  his 
ease. 

I  do  not  know  how  to  explain  it,  but  a  seal  certainly 
cannot  tell  a  man  from  a  seal  by  merely  looking  at  him 
even  at  so  short  a  distance  as  five  yards.  But  if  he  is 
stupid  as  to  a  man's  appearance,  he  is  very  keen  as  to 


270        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

his  actions.  When  within  ten  or  fifteen  yards  of  a  seal 
you  must  mind  your  P's  and  Q's  very  strictly  or  he  will 
detect  the  fraud. 

I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  seal's  inability  to  detect 
the  trick  that  is  being  played  on  him  is  not  due  to  simple 
stupidity,  but  is  rather  self-deception — auto-suggestion. 
He  has  made  up  his  mind  that  you  are  a  seal;  and  once 
made  up,  a  seal's  mind  stays  made  up.  There  is  nothing 
fickle  about  a  seal. 

In  the  case  of  my  first  seal  I  was  175  yards  from  him 
when  I  got  him  convinced  that  I  was  a  seal.  When 
eventually  he  began  to  take  his  regular  alternate  naps 
and  waking  spells,  I  began  a  systematic  advance,  moving 
ahead  while  he  slept  and  stopping  motionless  while  he 
was  awake.  If  at  any  time  he  watched  me  as  much  as 
half  a  minute  at  a  time  I  played  seal  some  more  by  lift- 
ing my  head  to  show  I  was  awake  or  by  bending  my 
legs  at  the  knees  to  pretend  that  I  was  scratching. 

Eskimos  sometimes  crawl  within  five  yards  of  a  seal 
before  throwing  a  harpoon  and  I  have  known  of  them 
crawling  so  close  that  they  could  seize  him  by  a  flipper 
with  one  hand  and  stab  him  with  a  knife  with  the  other. 
This  is  done  only  to  show  off  their  skill  as  hunters  or  else 
in  an  emergency  when  the  rifle  or  sealing  harpoon  has 
been  lost  or  forgotten  at  home.  I  ordinarily  crawl  within 
about  fifty  yards  and  did  so  in  this  case.  Then  I  waited 
until  the  seal  raised  his  head,  took  a  careful  aim  and  shot 
him  through  the  brain.  Next  I  dropped  my  rifle  on  the 
ice  and  ran  at  top  speed  to  catch  him,  for  although  he 
was  dead  there  was  still  a  chance  of  my  not  getting  him. 
He  was  lying  on  a  slippery  incline  of  ice  so  near  his  hole 
that  the  mere  shock  when  the  bullet  struck  might  start 
him  sliding.     It  had  started  him,  and  I  got  there  just  in 


HOW  I  LEARNED  TO  HUNT  SEALS        271 

time  to  seize  a  hind  flipper  as  he  was  gliding  into  the 
water.  On  other  occasions  I  have  had  to  slide  for  a  dead 
seal  as  a  runner  in  baseball  slides  for  a  base.  Some- 
times I  have  just  caught  the  seal  and  sometimes  I  have 
just  missed  him.  In  a  few  cases  he  has  slid  so  rapidly 
that  I  was  no  more  than  halfway  from  the  shooting  place 
to  his  hole  when  he  disappeared. 

Three  seals  out  of  four  have  buoyancy  enough  to  float, 
but  if  they  slide  into  the  water  the  momentum  gathered  by 
slipping  off  the  ledge  of  ice  is  enough  to  send  them 
diagonally  down  into  the  water  fifteen  or  twenty  feet. 
They  come  up  diagonally  under  the  ice.  The  ice  may 
be  as  much  as  seven  feet  thick  and  you  do  not  know 
exactly  where  they  are.  We,  therefore,  consider  that  a 
seal  is  lost  if  he  once  slips  into  his  hole,  and  we  do  not 
even  try  to  search. 

In  about  one  case  in  a  hundred  the  dead  seal  may  rise  in 
the  hole.  It  is,  therefore,  worth  while  to  stand  by  for  two 
or  three  minutes  on  a  chance  that  he  has  sunk  vertically 
and  that  he  will  come  back  up  vertically. 

It  would  be  easy  to  shoot  a  seal  at  a  distance  greater 
than  fifty  yards,  but  experience  shows  that  this  is  waste- 
ful. If  you  have  a  hundred  yards  to  run  the  seal's  dead 
body  has  at  least  an  even  chance  of  sliding  in  before 
you  get  there.  It  takes  so  much  cautious  effort  to  get 
within  a  hundred  yards  of  a  seal  that  you  had  better  not 
spoil  it  all  by  shooting  until  you  are  nearer.  Further- 
more, nothing  will  do  but  a  brain  shot  or  one  through  the 
spine  at  the  base  of  the  brain.  If  there  is  the  least  life 
in  the  animal,  a  wiggle  will  send  him  into  his  hole. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  seal's  hole  without  describing  it 
for  that  is  more  easily  done  in  connection  with  an  account 
of  our  second  method  of  hunting.     The  way  already 


272        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

described  the  Alaskan  Eskimos  call  the  auktok  or  crawl- 
ing method.  We  occasionally  kill  seals  by  the  more 
ingenious  mauttok  or  waiting  method. 

In  most  of  Alaska  the  mauttok  method  is  now  only  a 
tradition.  The  older  men  in  the  Mackenzie  district  know 
the  theory  but  I  have  never  seen  them  use  it.  My  first 
experience  with  mauttok  hunting  came  in  1910  when  I 
was  with  the  Copper  Eskimos  in  Coronation  Gulf. 

Through  the  eyes  of  a  southerner  nothing  can  be  a 
more  desolate  or  more  hopeless  desert  so  far  as  food  is 
concerned  than  the  level  expanse  of  winter  ice  along  the 
polar  coast.  If  the  coast  is  open  as  in  northern  Alaska, 
you  can  go  five  or  ten  miles  to  seaward  and  find  a  place 
where  the  wind  has  broken  the  ice  and  where  the  cakes 
are  in  motion.  Here  you  will  find  seals  swimming  about 
in  the  water  like  bathers  in  a  pond,  and  the  tracks  of 
polar  bears  that  live  on  the  seals  may  meet  you  anywhere. 
But  in  places  like  Coronation  Gulf  there  is  land  on  every 
side  and  the  ice  does  not  move  from  November,  when 
it  forms,  until  the  following  June  or  July,  when  it 
eventually  breaks  up  some  two  months  after  summer  and 
green  grass  have  come  upon  all  the  surrounding  lands. 
There  are  no  polar  bear  tracks  on  this  ice  except  in  rare 
years,  and  no  obvious  sign  indicates  the  presence  of  game. 

We  were  in  a  village  on  the  level  ice  some  ten  miles 
from  shore.  There  were  twelve  or  fifteen  snowhouses 
with  two  families  in  some  and  one  in  others.  The 
population  of  the  village  was  around  fifty,  among  whom 
there  were  about  fifteen  able-bodied  hunters.  A  few  men 
were  too  old  and  stayed  at  home  for  that  reason;  and 
boys  do  not  hunt  seals  until  thoy  are  nearly  grown. 

Around  mid-winter  we  have  on  a  clear  day  in  Coron- 
ation Gulf  about  six  hours  of  hunting  light.     At  that 


HOW  I  LEARNED  TO  HUNT  SEALS        273 

time  of  year  the  hunters  must  arise  before  dawn,  have 
their  breakfast  of  seal  meat  and  start  out  on  the  ice  with 
the  earliest  light.  When  I  had  my  first  lesson  in  the 
mauttok  hunt  the  conditions  did  not  differ  except  that  it 
was  spring  with  daylight  at  night — or  with  no  night,  if 
you  prefer  to  put  it  that  way.  Each  man  took  with  him 
a  dog  in  leash  and  our  trails  led  away  from  the  village 
in  all  directions  like  the  spokes  of  a  wheel.  The  ex- 
perienced hunters  went  singly,  each  with  a  dog,  but  I 
accompanied  my  host  for  I  knew  the  hunting  method 
only  from  description  and  before  trying  it  I  wanted  to 
see  how  it  was  actually  carried  out. 

Salt  ice  is  sticky.  On  a  lake  there  may  be  patches 
of  bare  ice  where  the  wind  has  swept  the  snow  away,  but 
this  can  scarcely  occur  on  the  ocean  for  a  certain  amount 
of  snow  must  adhere  to  the  sticky  surface  of  the  ice.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  there  was  a  fairly  uniform  layer  of 
snow  everywhere.  It  varied  from  something  like  six 
inches  in  most  places  to  a  depth  of  several  feet  if  drifts 
had  been  piling  up  in  the  lee  of  a  snag  of  ice  where  a 
fracture  of  the  surface  had  taken  place  in  some  autumn 
gale.  We  walked  slowly  as  if  strolling  at  leisure.  Our 
dog  was  mildly  excited  for  he  knew  there  was  food  to  be 
secured.  Ke  would,  therefore,  tug  on  his  leading  string 
and  walk  ahead  of  his  master,  pulling  him  this  way  and 
that.  Now  and  then  he  would  stop  and  sniff  at  the  snow. 
I  thought  then  that  this  was  the  result  of  his  special 
training,  but  I  know  now  that  any  dog  of  keen  scent  will 
do  about  as  he  did.  I  should  imagine  that  a  spaniel  or 
bloodhound  from  a  southern  country  would  make  a  good 
sealing  dog  the  very  first  day. 

We  had  gone  about  a  mile  when  the  dog  stopped  to 
sniff  carefully  on  a  drift  about  two  feet  in  depth.     This 


274        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

meant  he  might  have  found  a  seal  hole  and  with  a  cane 
we  poked  around  in  the  snow  for  a  while.  The  scent 
proved  false,  for  all  we  found  were  signs  that  a  fox  had 
been  there  earlier  in  the  winter. 

The  first  indication  having  proved  worthless,  we  con- 
tinued our  zigzag  stroll.  Half  a  mile  further  on  the  dog 
stopped  again  to  sniff  and  his  master  probed  into  the 
snowdrift  with  his  cane.  After  a  dozen  or  two  stabs, 
each  of  which  met  the  solid  ice  below,  the  cane  went 
deeper  than  before.  It  had  struck  the  seal's  breathing 
hole  and  slipped  through  into  the  water  beneath. 

This  snowdrift  was  comparatively  soft.  The  hunter 
now  put  his  foot  upon  the  snow  just  where  he  had  dis- 
covered the  seal's  hole  and  pressed  down  the  snow  firmly. 
He  then  took  from  his  hunting  kit  an  ivory  rod  about 
as  big  round  as  a  knitting  needle  and  twice  as  long.  This 
rod  had  a  little  disc  on  one  end  of  it  the  size  of  a  ten- 
cent  piece,  or  smaller.  At  the  other  end  of  the  rod  was 
an  eyelet  through  which  was  threaded  a  string  about  a 
foot  long  fastened  to  a  sort  of  ivory  pin.  Through  the 
hole  made  by  his  cane  the  hunter  now  stuck  down  his 
ivory  probe  so  that  the  end  with  the  disc  on  it  was  a 
few  inches  below  the  surface  of  the  water  in  the  seal's 
hole.  Then  he  packed  enough  loose  snow  around  the 
probe  so  that  it  did  not  slip  in  further.  He  then  stuck 
the  pin  into  the  snow  about  a  foot  away.  This  pre- 
caution was  taken  so  that  the  hunting  contrivance  should 
not  be  lost  when  it  came  to  spearing  the  seal. 

It  is  now  time  to  explain  how  the  seal  happened  to 
be  living  just  here  under  the  ice.  The  preceding  autumn 
had  found  him  and  all  the  other  seals  of  the  neighborhood 
swimming  around  freely  in  open  water.  Then  the  first 
frosts  had  come  and  young  ice  had  formed  one  night. 


HOW  I  LEARNED  TO  HUNT  SEALS        275 

First  this  ice  was  so  weak  that  the  seal  could  come  up 
whenever  he  liked  and  break  it  by  bumping  his  head 
against  it.  He  had  to  do  this  several  times  an  hour,  for 
a  seal  has  to  breath  the  free  air  occasionally.  He  is  not 
a  fish  with  gills  that  can  take  oxygen  from  the  water, 
but  a  mammal  that  breathes  through  nostrils  like  a  dog. 

The  fresh  water  ice  with  which  most  of  us  are  familiar  is 
transparent  like  window  glass  and  almost  as  hard,  but 
the  thinnest  sea  ice  is  never  transparent.  In  appearance 
it  is  more  like  ground  glass  which  lets  the  light  through 
although  you  cannot  see  through  it.  Another  difference 
is  that  fresh  ice  is  so  strong  that  a  big  man  can  walk 
around  safely  on  a  pond  covered  by  an  inch  of  it.  An 
inch  of  salt  ice  would  not  support  a  puppy,  and  children 
cannot  play  safely  on  three  inches  of  it.  Where  lake  ice 
is  like  glass,  sea  ice  is  like  ice  cream  until  it  finally 
hardens  and  toughens  with  increasing  thickness.  We  do 
not  consider  it  safe  to  travel  with  a  dog  team  and  loaded 
sledge  over  sea  ice  less  than  six  inches  in  thickness.  Once 
we  broke  through  and  came  near  losing  all  our  belongings 
crossing  a  stretch  of  ice  five  and  three-quarters  inches 
thick.  We  knew  the  danger  and  had  taken  the  risk  be- 
cause the  strip  was  only  a  few  yards  wide  and  we  thought 
we  could  hurry  across  in  safety.  Our  dogs  did  get  across 
and  the  ice  broke  just  as  the  front  end  of  our  sled  touched 
the  solid  floe,  so  that  only  the  back  end  of  the  sled  got 
into  the  water.  We  would  have  lost  the  whole  load  had 
the  ice  broken  when  the  sled  was  two  feet  farther  away 
from  the  floe. 

This  mushiness  of  the  sea  ice  in  the  fall  enables  the 
seals  to  continue  their  travels  in  the  ocean  underneath  it 
until  a  thickness  of  four  inches  has  been  attained.  After 
that  they  can  no  longer  smash  their  way  up  to  the  air, 


276        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

and  so  they  have  to  gnaw  their  way  up.  The  teeth  of  a 
seal  look  like  the  teeth  of  a  dog,  but  they  are  far  enough 
forward  in  his  jaw  so  he  can  gnaw  with  them  almost  as 
well  as  a  rat  can  gnaw.  In  the  manner  of  a  rat  making 
a  hole  through  a  board  the  seal  now  makes  a  hole  through 
the  ice  just  big  enough  to  stick  his  nostrils  up  against 
to  breathe.  In  some  cases  this  hole  is  not  over  half 
an  inch  in  diameter,  although  it  may  be  an  inch  or  more. 

Now  the  seal  is  confined  to  this  vicinity.  He  may  dive 
down  fifty  feet  or  so,  searching  for  a  fish  or  something 
else  to  eat,  but  he  has  to  come  up  to  the  hole  every  now 
and  then  for  a  breath  of  air. 

For  convenience,  or  possibly  because  he  has  nothing 
better  to  do,  the  seal  will  make  in  the  vicinity  half  a  dozen 
or  a  dozen  other  breathing  holes  exactly  like  the  first 
As  the  ice  gradually  thickens  to  six  inches,  a  foot,  two 
feet,  four  feet,  and  even  six  or  seven  feet  at  a  maximum, 
the  seal  has  to  keep  busy  gnawing  away  to  keep  open 
as  many  of  the  holes  as  he  desires.  His  object  is  to  be 
able  to  press  his  nostrils  against  a  little  hole  at  the  very 
surface  of  the  ice.  To  do  this,  he  has  to  make  in  connec- 
tion with  each  hole  a  cigar-shaped  vertical  chamber  big 
enough  to  admit  his  whole  body.  This  must  mean  a 
great  deal  of  work,  but  perhaps  it  helps  him  to  pass  the 
time  away. 

Soon  after  the  autumn  freeze-up,  the  snow  is  bound  to 
come  and  cover  up  all  the  breathing  holes.  This  is 
evidently  what  the  seal  wants,  for  in  rare  instances  some 
eddy  of  wind,  caused  perhaps  by  an  ice  hummock  not  far 
away,  will  keep  free  of  snow  the  particular  spot  where 
the  seal  has  one  of  his  holes.  Such  a  hole  he  always 
abandons  because  the  freezing  is  more  rapid  where  the 
ice  is  not  blanketed  by  snow,  or  else  perhaps  because  he 


HOW  I  LEARNED  TO  HUNT  SEALS        277 

sees  danger  in  the  exposed  nature  of  this  breathing  place. 

Whether  the  snow  covering  the  air  hole  is  four  inches 
or  four  feet,  it  is  granular  and  porous  and  the  seal  is  able 
to  suck  in  air  through  it  to  breathe. 

My  Eskimo  friend  had  now  discovered  one  of  these 
breathing  holes.  He  knew  it  was  only  one  of  several. 
If  there  were  only  one  breathing  hole  to  each  seal,  the 
hunter  would  be  bound  to  get  him  in  a  few  minutes;  but 
there  are  many  holes  and  it  is  a  matter  of  chance  whether 
the  seal  is  using  just  the  one  you  have  discovered.  In 
our  case,  he  was  evidently  using  some  other  hole  for  we 
stood  there  half  the  day  and  nothing  happened.  We  were 
both  so  warmly  dressed  that  although  the  temperature 
was  about  40  °  below  zero  we  did  not  feel  cold  even 
when  standing  still. 

I  got  tired  of  standing  still,  however,  and  my  Eskimo 
friend  said  it  would  be  all  right  for  me  to  walk  around  if 
I  would  go  a  hundred  yards  off.  He  himself  stood 
motionless  on  the  leeward  side  of  the  hole  (for  the  seal 
has  a  very  keen  sense  of  smell).  Under  his  feet  he  had 
a  pad  of  fox  skin  to  give  added  protection  from  the  cold. 
In  his  hand  he  held  his  sealing  harpoon.  Like  all  Eskimo 
harpoons,  this  had  a  detachable  head  to  which  there  was 
attached  a  strong  line — in  this  case  braided  caribou  sinew, 
but  strong  leather  thongs  are  sometimes  used. 

We  had  been  there  several  hours  waiting  for  our  seal 
to  rise  when  another  Eskimo  came  up  who  had  not  had 
luck  finding  a  breathing  hole.  With  his  dog  the  new- 
comer started  searching  around  in  about  a  fifty-yard 
circle.  Finally  his  dog  found  another  of  our  seal's 
breathing  holes.  He  then  took  his  dog  and  tethered 
him  over  by  our  dog  about  a  hundred  yards  away  from 
either  hole.    The  newcomer  then  set  his  indicator  exactly 


278        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

as  my  friend  had  done  and  now  the  two  waited  for  the 
seal.  They  also  encouraged  me  to  walk  around  at  a  con- 
siderable distance  from  either  of  them,  stamping  on  the 
snow  here  and  there.  The  idea  was  to  try  to  scare  the 
seal  away  from  whatever  hole  he  might  be  using  to  one  or 
the  other  of  those  that  were  now  being  watched. 

It  may  have  been  that  I  scared  the  seal  from  some  dis- 
tant hole  to  the  one  watched  by  the  newcomer,  for  all 
of  a  sudden  I  saw  him  come  to  alert  attention.  Knowing 
that  the  seal  was  about  to  come  up,  I  approached  stealth- 
ily to  within  about  ten  yards  and  watched.  When  a  seal 
is  approaching  the  breathing  hole  that  contains  an  indi- 
cator, the  wave  motion  in  the  water  created  by  his  swim- 
ming will  start  the  indicator  trembling  while  the  animal 
is  still  some  distance  off.  When  he  finally  comes  right 
into  the  torpedo-shaped  chamber  and  rises  straight  up 
through  the  water  to  press  his  nose  against  the  breathing 
hole,  he  touches  the  lower  end  of  the  rod.  If  it  strikes 
him  squarely  on  the  middle  of  his  snout  he  will  lift  it  up; 
but  if  it  strikes  slantingly,  as  it  nearly  always  does,  then 
instead  of  being  lifted  up,  the  indicator  slips  down  deeper 
than  before.  Just  at  that  moment  the  hunter  drives  his 
harpoon  down  alongside  of  the  indicator.  If  he  hits  the 
hole  in  the  ice  he  hits  the  seal,  for  his  nose  is  at  that 
moment  in  the  hole. 

In  this  case  the  hunter  made  no  slip  and  in  a  moment 
he  was  struggling  with  a  powerful  animal  that  had  been 
harpooned  in  the  side  of  the  neck.  The  other  hunter 
rushed  up  and  by  the  braided  sinew  rope  one  of  them 
held  the  animal  while  the  other  got  his  ice  chisel  and 
enlarged  the  hole  until  it  was  something  over  a  foot  in 
diameter,  or  large  enough  to  pull  the  seal  out.     While 


HOW  I  LEARNED  TO  HUNT  SEALS        279 

this  was  going  on,  the  dogs  were  watching  attentively, 
not  only  because  they  knew  that  the  hunt  was  in  progress, 
but  also  because  experience  had  taught  them  that  their 
turn  to  help  would  soon  come. 

After  killing  the  seal  by  a  rap  on  the  head  the  man  who 
had  caught  it  went  over  to  fetch  his  dog.  The  seal 
hunter's  dog  always  wears  a  light  leather  harness.  This 
does  not  incommode  him  at  all  in  walking.  When  the 
seal  has  been  killed,  it  is  fastened  to  the  harness  by  a 
leather  trace  a  few  feet  long  and  the  dog  is  told  to  go 
drag  it  home.  If  we  had  caught  our  seal  early  in  the 
day  the  dog  would  have  gone  home  alone  dragging  the 
catch  up  to  the  door  of  his  master's  house,  while  the 
hunter  went  across  the  ice  to  some  neighbor  he  saw 
watching  at  another  seal  hole  to  co-operate  with  him  as 
our  second  hunter  had  in  this  case  co-operated  with  us. 
But  we  did  not  get  our  seal  until  it  was  almost  time  to  go 
home,  so  we  followed  the  dog  as  he  dragged  the  seal  to 
camp. 

This  method  of  sealing  is  little  used  in  most  Eskimo 
districts  and  not  at  all  in  others  because  the  winds  and 
currents  break  up  the  ice  enough  so  that  you  can  get 
seals  in  the  open  water  all  winter.  There  are  two  kinds 
of  localities  where  the  method  is  the  only  one  available. 
These  are  on  one  hand  such  enclosed  bodies  of  water 
as  Coronation  Gulf,  and  on  the  other  the  stretches  far 
away  from  land  (one  or  several  hundred  miles)  where 
the  currents  are  so  sluggish  that  the  ice  remains  all  winter 
in  unbroken  masses,  hundreds  of  square  miles  in  area. 
In  my  various  exploratory  journeys  I  have  had  little  use 
for  the  mauttok  method,  but  I  have  always  carried  it  in 
my  mind  and  felt  about  it  as  one  feels  about  an  accident 


280        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

insurance  policy — it  is  unnecessary  as  long  as  all  goes 
well,  but  a  very  good  thing  to  have  up  your  sleeve  in  case 
of  hard  luck. 

The  third  method  of  seal  hunting  is  the  most  important 
in  the  sense  that  most  seals  are  killed  by  it,  but  it  is 
so  simple  that  it  is -hardly  worth  describing.  Where  the 
offshore  ice  is  broken  up,  you  simply  take  your  station 
near  the  edge  of  the  landfast  ice  early  in  the  morning 
and  watch  the  water,  waiting  for  a  seal  to  appear.  You 
may  see  none  when  you  first  arrive  at  the  open  water, 
and  you  may  see  none  all  day.  It  has  happened  to  me 
that  I  have  sat  at  the  edge  of  open  water  day  after  day 
for  a  week  without  seeing  a  seal.  But  luck  will  turn 
and  eventually  they  will  come. 

It  has  also  happened  that  when  I  came  to  the  edge  of 
the  water  in  the  early  morning  I  saw  dozens  of  seals 
within  shooting  distance  and  had  as  many  as  I  wanted 
killed  within  a  few  minutes.  In  traveling  we  never  want 
more  than  one  at  a  time,  but  when  we  are  spending  the 
winter  in  some  settled  camp  we  like  to  secure  enough  in 
the  fall  to  last  all  winter.  We  seldom  succeed  in  doing 
that,  however,  and  usually  it  is  necessary  even  when 
living  in  one  place  to  do  at  least  a  little  hunting  during 
the  winter.  In  a  way  this  is  really  best  for  it  keeps  camp 
life  from  becoming  monotonous. 

The  only  point  about  hunting  seals  in  open  water  is 
that  you  must  shoot  them  through  the  head.  When 
spying  around,  the  seal  will  often  lift  himself  out  of  the 
water  so  high  that  you  could  shoot  him  through  the  heart, 
but  if  you  make  an  opening  through  his  body,  and  espe- 
cially if  you  perforate  the  lungs,  he  is  very  likely  to  sink. 
At  the  hunting  season  in  the  fall,  we  estimate  that  of  seals 
shot  through  the  head  nine  out  of  ten  will  float.     If  seals 


HOW  I  LEARNED  TO  HUNT  SEALS        281 

are  shot  through  the  body,  many  of  them  will  sink — any- 
thing from  one  out  of  four  to  one  out  of  two. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  seals  that  we  hunt  north  of 
Canada  and  north  of  Alaska;  the  ordinary  seal  (phoca 
hispida)  and  the  bearded  seal  (erignathus  barbatus). 
Even  the  largest  of  the  common  seals  do  not  go  much 
over  two  hundred  pounds,  but  the  bearded  seals  may  run 
up  to  eight  hundred  pounds.  Both  are  valuable  for  food, 
but  most  people  prefer  the  bearded  seals.  The  great 
difficulty  about  them,  however,  is  that  when  killed  in  the 
water  they  usually  sink,  and  when  harpooned  through  a 
hole  in  the  ice,  they  are  so  strong  that  they  may  pull 
the  harpoon  line  from  the  hands  of  the  hunter  and  swim 
off  with  it.  There  are  Eskimos  whose  hands  have  been 
cut  to  the  bone  by  the  rope  slipping  through  them  as  the 
seal  was  getting  away. 


CHAPTER  III 

HOW  WE  HUNT  POLAR  BEARS 

Among  land  animals  the  polar  bears  are  the  most  power- 
ful of  all  beasts  of  prey.  When  full  grown  they  may  be 
three  times  as  big  as  the  biggest  African  lion.  Their 
white  color  makes  them  difficult  to  see  against  a  back- 
ground of  snow  or  ice,  and  few  animals  have  more  intelli- 
gence. It  is  important  therefore  that  the  hunter  (and 
especially  people  like  us  who  live  by  hunting)  shall  under- 
stand their  nature  and  habits  thoroughly. 

Some  say  the  Kadiak  bears  of  southwestern  Alaska 
are  larger  than  polar  bears.  Even  if  this  be  so,  they  are 
far  less  dangerous,  for  a  grizzly  is  chiefly  vegetarian  in  his 
diet.  But  polar  bears  live  exclusively  by  hunting  seals 
and  under  certain  circumstances  they  are  likely  to  mis- 
take people  for  seals  and  attack  them  on  that  basis.  This 
makes  them,  in  my  experience  at  least,  far  more  danger- 
ous than  the  grizzly.  I  have  killed  thirteen  grizzlies,  but 
only  for  scientific  purposes  or  else  when  badly  in  need 
of  food.  I  always  avoid  killing  grizzlies  when  I  can. 
With  all  their  strength  and  their  splendid  weapons  of 
teeth  and  claws  they  are  generally  retiring  and  will  avoid 
a  man  whenever  they  can.  It  is  possible  that  polar  bears 
also  would  avoid  men  if  they  knew  what  they  were.  But 
they  so  frequently  mistake  us  for  seals  that  it  makes 
little  practical  difference  to  us  what  they  might  do  if  they 
really  knew  what  we  were. 

There  is  wide  spread  a  curious  belief  about  polar  bears 

282 


HOW  WE  HUNT  POLAR  BEARS  283 

— that  they  live  mainly  or  partly  on  fish.  This  belief 
probably  arose  from  the  well-known  fact  that  black  bears 
and  grizzlies  in  forests  and  mountains  frequently  eat  fish. 
The  belief  has  been  confirmed  when  people  about  to  write 
zoological  or  geographical  text-books  for  schools  have 
visited  zoological  gardens  and  have  found  that  polar  bears 
in  captivity  eat  fish.  The  reason  why  they  are  fed  fish 
in  captivity  is  primarily  that  fish  is  cheaper  than  meat. 
I  have  killed  many  dozens  of  polar  bears  and  have  seen 
hundreds  of  others,  but  I  have  yet  to  find  any  evidence 
that  they  eat  fish  or  try  to  catch  them.  Neither  have  I 
met  any  Eskimo  who  believes  that  polar  bears  ever  try 
to  catch  fish. 

When  I  first  lived  at  Tuktuyaktok  in  1906,  we  had  bear 
fat  to  eat  with  our  fish.  Two  or  three  bears  had  been 
killed  in  the  early  fall  before  I  arrived  and  their  meat  had 
been  eaten  immediately  but  some  of  the  fat  had  been 
saved  against  winter.  After  my  arrival  no  bears  were 
found  in  that  locality  and  I  went  home  at  the  end  of  my 
first  polar  expedition  without  ever  having  seen  a  bear. 

My  first  bear  hunt  came  on  my  second  expedition,  the 
winter  of  1909-10.  It  was  not  really  my  bear  hunt  but 
that  of  some  Eskimos  who  weie  living  on  the  north  coast 
of  Alaska  east  of  Point  Barrow. 

The  time  was  mid-winter,  and  the  sun  even  at  noon  did 
not  rise  above  the  southern  horizon.  It  was  not  far 
below  the  horizon,  though,  for  the  clouds  in  the  south  were 
red  and  yellow  and  other  sunset  colors  for  several  hours 
around  noon  each  day,  and  there  was  light  enough  for 
aiming  a  rifle  from  nine-thirty  in  the  morning  until  two- 
thirty  in  the  afternoon. 

The  Eskimos  were  living  in  a  village  of  three  houses 
with  a  total  population  of  about  twenty  people.     Traps 


284        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

were  being  set  for  foxes  in  the  near  neighborhood.  For 
this  and  other  reasons  the  Eskimos  kept  their  dogs  tied — 
otherwise  they  were  liable  to  go  afield  and  get  caught  in 
the  traps.  In  mid-winter  this  would  be  serious,  for  al- 
though a  dog  never  freezes  his  feet  under  ordinary 
circumstances,  his  foot  would  be  frozen  solid  in  an  hour 
if  held  between  the  steel  jaws  of  a  trap. 

The  people  were  at  breakfast  when  the  dogs  set  up  a 
great  racket.  All  the  men  rushed  out  with  rifles  in  their 
hands.  The  morning  light  was  not  yet  clear  but  they 
could  see  the  slightly  yellowish  figure  of  a  polar  bear 
against  the  white  of  the  hillside.  He  was  standing  two 
or  three  hundred  yards  off  and  apparently  considering 
what  to  make  of  all  the  racket.  As  the  first  men  were 
coming  out  his  mind  was  made  up  and  he  started  off  along 
the  coast  at  a  rolling  gallop.  Some  of  the  Eskimos  rushed 
to  where  the  dogs  were  tied  and  let  go  half  a  dozen  of 
them.  Each  dog  as  he  was  freed  flew  like  an  arrow  in 
the  direction  in  which  the  bear  had  disappeared.  A  bear 
can  run  a  good  deal  faster  than  a  man  but  not  nearly  as 
fast  as  a  dog,  and  inside  of  a  mile  the  first  dog  caught  up 
to  him  and  bit  him. sharply  in  the  heel,  whereupon  the 
bear  turned  around  and  tried  to  strike  the  dog  with  his 
fore  paw.  But  the  agility  of  a  dog  is  superior  to  that  of 
a  bear  and  if  he  has  good  footing  he  is  certain  to  avoid 
the  blows  aimed  at  him. 

The  first  dog  was  soon  joined  by  the  second  and  later 
by  all  the  rest.  They  made  a  howling  and  snapping  ring 
round  the  bear.  It  did  not  make  any  difference  which 
dog  he  faced,  there  would  be  another  dog  at  his  heels  to 
bite  him. 

Had  there  been  but  one  Eskimo  hunter  all  might  have 
been  well.     From  lh;.>  adventure  and  from  several  others 


HOW  WE  HUNT  POLAR  BEARS  285 

of  the  same  kind,  I  learned  that  whenever  possible  there 
should  be  but  a  single  hunter  at  a  bear  hunt.  With  a 
party  of  white  men  it  is  nearly  impossible  to  manage  this, 
for  unless  they  are  old  hands  they  become  daffy  with 
excitement  whenever  a  bear  turns  up.  Eskimos  are  little 
better,  especially  the  youngsters  who  have  never  seen  a 
bear  or  at  least  have  never  helped  kill  one.  In  this  case, 
there  were  eight  or  ten  Eskimos,  ranging  in  age  from  boys 
of  ten  or  twelve  to  the  leading  man  of  the  community  who 
was  about  fifty.  As  they  came  they  shouted  to  each 
other  and  to  the  dogs. 

The  polar  bear  evidently  realized  that  there  was  more 
danger  from  the  men  than  the  dogs,  so  he  set  off  again  at 
a  gallop.  But  the  dogs  nipped  his  heels  so  viciously 
that  he  did  not  have  quite  the  strength  of  mind  to  con- 
tinue running  and  turned  again  in  an  attempt  to  corner 
one  of  the  dogs  against  an  ice  hummock.  Several  delays 
of  this  sort  eventually  enabled  the  hunters  to  get  within 
shooting  distance  and  a  fusillade  began.  The  old  man 
begged  the  others  not  to  shoot  for  fear  of  killing  some 
of  the  dogs,  but  most  of  the  excited  hunters  paid  no 
attention  to  him.  His  intention  was  the  sensible  one  of 
getting  within  ten  or  fifteen  yards  of  the  scrimmage  and 
then  watching  for  an  opportunity  to  fire  when  no  dogs 
were  in  line  with  the  bullets.  Waiting  his  chance  he 
would  have  shot  the  bear  near  the  heart  and  everything 
would  have  been  over.  But  before  he  got  near  enough, 
one  dog  had  been  wounded  by  a  stray  bullet  and  just 
as  the  old  man  was  about  to  kill  the  bear,  a  second  bullet 
struck  another  dog  and  killed  him  instantly.  The  bear 
already  had  two  or  three  flesh  wounds  which  he  appeared 
to  mistake  for  dog  bites,  for  each  time  he  was  hit  he 
made  redoubled  efforts  to  catch  the  dogs.     When  the  old 


286        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

man  at  last  got  a  shot  in,  the  bear  fell  dead.  He  found 
on  walking  up  that  the  dog  killed  was  the  leader  of  his 
team  and  his  favorite  dog.  He  told  me  himself  later  that 
he  would  rather  have  ten  bears  escape  than  lose  one  such 
dog.  This  was  partly  sentiment;  but  even  in  money  one 
good  leader  dog  was  worth  as  much  as  the  skins  of  two 
or  three  bears. 

I  have  seen  several  other  hunts  where  dogs  were  set  on 
bears  and  I  have  read  a  great  deal  about  this  sort  of  hunt- 
ing which  is  common  in  Greenland  and  has  been  employed 
by  certain  explorers  who  work  in  that  locality.  The  more 
I  see  and  the  more  I  read,  the  less  inclined  I  am  to  favor 
the  method.  It  is  too  dangerous  to  the  dogs  and  if  you 
are  a  good  bear  hunter  you  can  get  the  bear  well  enough 
without  the  use  of  dogs. 

Although  polar  bears  are  much  more  dangerous  than 
grizzly  bears,  the  risk  to  men  in  hunting  them  is  com- 
monly overrated.  Still,  there  may  be  danger,  as  the 
following  story  shows: 

It  was  in  the  early  spring  of  1910.  Our  party  were  on 
their  way  from  the  Mackenzie  district  by  sled  eastward 
along  the  north  coast  of  the  mainland.  We  were  travel- 
ing along  the  shore  of  Dolphin  and  Union  Straits.  The 
coastline  is  fairly  straight  and  much  of  the  land  right 
along  the  coast  is  low,  but  a  short  distance  inland  there 
are  the  foothills  of  a  range  of  low  mountains  that  run 
roughly  parallel  to  the  coast.  My  three  Eskimo  com- 
panions with  our  dog  team  had  orders  to  travel  about 
fifteen  miles  a  day  eastward  along  the  coast  and  to  camp 
at  any  suitable  locality  when  they  estimated  that  the 
fifteen-mile  distance  had  been  traversed.  Our  custom 
was  that  immediately  after  breakfast  every  morning  I 
would  leave  the  camp  and  walk  about  three  miles  directly 


HOW  WE  HUNT  POLAR  BEARS  287 

inland.  This  took  me  about  an  hour,  during  which  the 
Eskimos  chatted  and  enjoyed  themselves.  At  the  end 
of  the  first  hour  I  would  turn  eastward  to  walk  from  hill- 
top to  hilltop  parallel  to  the  coast  and  approximately 
three  miles  inland.  About  this  time  the  Eskimos  would 
come  out  of  the  camp  and  commence  preparing  in  a 
leisurely  way  for  the  day's  march.  They  would  pull 
down  the  tent,  roll  up  the  bedding,  load  everything  on 
the  sled  and  hitch  up  the  dogs.  Designedly  this  was 
done  slowly,  and  by  the  time  they  were  ready  to  start  I 
would  be  five  or  six  miles  ahead  of  them. 

Occasionally  during  the  day  they  would  stop  at  some 
promontory  and  with  their  field  glasses  scan  the  country 
inland  from  them  and  ahead  for  sight  of  me  or  for  any 
signal.  My  custom  was  that  if  I  saw  game  I  would  heap 
up  a  pile  of  stones  on  top  of  some  hill.  This  would  be 
a  sign  to  the  Eskimos  that  I  would  probably  kill  game 
about  abreast  of  this  monument.  They  would,  accord- 
ingly, camp  on  the  coast  at  the  point  nearest  to  the 
monument  and  then  come  inland  with  an  empty  sled  to 
fetch  any  meat  I  might  have  secured. 

We  had  also  a  system  of  signals  which  could  be  inter- 
preted at  a  distance  through  field  glasses.  In  some  cases 
when  I  saw  game  I  sat  down  on  a  hilltop  and  waited  until 
I  saw  through  my  field  glasses  that  the  Eskimos  had 
stopped  and  were  surveying  the  country  through  their 
glasses.  As  soon  as  they  saw  me,  they  would  make  a 
signal  which  I  could  see,  whereupon  I  would  stand  up 
and  make  signals  which  they  in  turn  could  interpret  in 
one  of  half  a  dozen  ways.  The  signal  might  mean  that 
they  were  to  camp  and  stay  in  camp,  or  might  mean  that 
they  were  to  camp  and  then  come  inland  for  meat.  Again 
the  meaning  might  be  that  they  could  proceed  to  the  next 


288        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

suitable  camping  place  and  there  await  my  arrival.  In 
some  cases  I  signaled  to  them  that  the  game  in  sight  was 
more  convenient  for  them  to  kill  than  for  me,  whereupon 
two  of  them  would  immediately  set  off  in  the  direction  I 
indicated  while  the  third  made  camp. 

On  the  day  in  question  I  had  seen  no  trace  of  game. 
I  had  been  walking  rapidly  and  must  have  been  about  five 
or  six  miles  ahead  of  my  companions.  The  mountains 
were  running  so  near  the  coast  at  this  place  that  my 
course  v/as  less  than  a  mile  from  the  beach.  Up  to  that 
time  we  had  on  this  journey  depended  for  our  living  on 
caribou  and  grizzly  bears.  But  now  there  were  no  signs 
of  either,  so  I  took  up  my  position  on  a  conspicuous  hill 
and  decided  to  spend  an  hour  or  so  in  a  careful  study 
of  the  sea  ice  through  my  field  glasses  in  the  hope  of 
discovering  either  a  sleeping  seal  or  possibly  a  polar 
bear. 

I  had  been  examining  the  ice  for  some  time  when  I 
noticed  a  spot  which  seemed  to  me  more  yellow  than  ice 
ought  to  be.  It  was  about  a  mile  from  the  coast  out 
among  the  rough  ice.  I  watched  this  for  a  long  time 
but  saw  no  motion.  That  was  not  conclusive  in  itself 
for  a  polar  bear,  especially  after  a  full  meal  of  seal  meat, 
is  likely  to  sleep  for  hours  and  even  for  the  larger  part 
of  a  day.  Accordingly,  I  continued  sitting  and  studying 
the  ice  elsewhere  as  well  as  the  mountains  behind  me, 
occasionally  turning  my  glasses  to  the  yellow  spot  to  see 
if  it  were  still  there.  I  think  I  had  done  this  three  or 
four  times  and  my  mind  was  just  about  made  up  to 
proceed  along  the  const  and  assume  that  the  yellow  spot 
was  nothing  but  ice,  when  on  looking  back  I  failed  to 
see  it.  It  was  a  bear  (hen  and  had  started  traveling  or 
else  had  gotten  up,  moved  a  little  way  and  lain  down 


HOW  WE  HUNT  POLAR  BEARS  23q 

again  behind  a  hummock  where  it  would  be  invisible.  If 
the  animal  was  traveling,  I  should  presently  see  it  passing 
over  some  open  space.  I  watched  for  a  while  but  saw 
nothing.  Evidently  then  the  bear  had  merely  made  a 
short  move  and  had  gone  to  sleep  behind  a  hummock. 

I  knew  that  when  I  got  down  on  the  sea  ice  it  would  be 
difficult  to  keep  my  bearings.  The  winter  storms  had 
broken  the  ice  badly  and  it  was  heaped  up  in  a  chaos 
of  hummocks  that  had  the  angular  outline  of  very  rugged 
mountains,  although  the  highest  peaks  were  no  more  than 
forty  or  fifty  feet.  When  you  get  down  among  such  ice, 
it  is  almost  as  if  you  were  in  a  forest.  You  can  see  the 
neighboring  hummocks  and  the  sky  above  you,  but  you 
get  no  good  view  of  your  surroundings.  When  you  climb 
to  the  top  of  even  the  highest  crags  of  ice,  you  get  a 
view  of  the  tops  of  all  the  other  crags,  although  here  and 
there  a  little  ice  valley  may  open.  But  the  mountains 
are  so  much  higher  than  the  ice  that  a  man  out  on  the 
ice  can  always  get  a  view  of  them  by  climbing  on  a 
hummock.  I  accordingly  memorized  the  mountains  care- 
fully so  that  by  glancing  back  at  them  occasionally  and 
keeping  certain  peaks  in  line  I  would  be  able  to  travel 
straight  out  upon  the  ice  in  the  direction  where  the  bear 
had  disappeared. 

Once  certain  of  having  my  bearings  right,  I  put  my 
field  glasses  in  their  case  and  ran  as  fast  as  I  could  down 
the  slope,  for  it  was  possible  the  bear  might  get  up  any 
time  and  move  on.  When  I  had  traveled  out  on  the  ice 
about  the  estimated  distance,  I  climbed  on  a  hummock 
and  spent  some  time  looking  around  but  saw  nothing. 
The  campaign  now  was  to  move  from  hummock  to  hum- 
mock for,  say,  a  quarter  of  a  mile  until  I  felt  sure  that  I 
had  passed  on  beyond  the  bear.     I  would  then  begin 


29o        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

to  circle  until  I  came  upon  the  animal  or  else  upon  its 
tracks. 

I  was  still  thinking  that  the  bear  was  ahead  of  me  and 
was  clambering  down  from  a  high  ridge  when  I  heard 
behind  me  a  noise  something  like  the  hiss  of  an  angry 
goose.  From  this  point  I  shall  tell  the  story  as  I  wrote 
it  down  many  years  ago  in  my  book  "My  Life  With  the 
Eskimo." 

My  rifle  was  buckled  in  its  case  slung  across  my  back,  and 
I  was  slowly  and  cautiously  clambering  down  the  far  side  of 
a  pressure  ridge,  when  I  heard  behind  me  a  noise  like  the  spit- 
ting of  a  cat  or  the  hiss  of  a  goose.  I  looked  back  and  saw, 
about  twenty  feet  away  and  almost  above  me,  a  polar  bear. 

Had  he  come  the  remaining  twenty  feet  as  quietly  and 
quickly  as  a  bear  can,  the  literary  value  of  the  incident  would 
have  been  lost  forever;  for,  as  the  Greek  fable  points  out,  a 
lion  does  not  write  a  book.  From  his  eye  and  attitude,  as  well 
as  the  story  his  trail  told  afterward  there  was  no  doubting  his 
intentions:  the  hiss  was  merely  his  way  of  saying,  "Watch  me 
do  it!"  Or  at  least  that  is  how  I  interpreted  it;  possibly  the 
motive  was  chivalry,  and  the  hiss  was  his  way  of  saying  Garde! 
Whichever  it  was,  it  was  the  fatal  mistake  of  a  game  played 
well  to  that  point;  for  no  animal  on  earth  can  afford  to  give 
warning  to  a  man  with  a  rifle.  And  why  should  he?  Has  a 
hunter  ever  played  fair  with  one  of  them? 

Afterward  the  snow  told  plainly  the  short — and  for  one  of 
the  participants,  tragic — story.  I  had  overestimated  the  bear's 
distance  from  shore,  and  had  passed  the  spot  where  he  lay, 
going  a  hundred  yards  or  two  to  windward;  on  scenting  me 
he  had  come  up  the  wind  to  my  trail,  and  had  then  followed 
it,  walking  about  ten  paces  to  leeward  of  it,  apparently  fol- 
lowing my  tracks  by  smelling  them  from  a  distance.  The  rea- 
son I  had  not  seen  his  approach  was  that  it  had  not  occurred 
to  me  to  look  back  over  my  own  trail ;  I  was  so  used  to  hunting 


HOW  WE  HUNT  POLAR  BEARS  291 

bears  that  the  possibility  of  one  of  them  assuming  my  own 
role  and  hunting  me  had  been  left  out  of  consideration.  A 
good  hunter,  like  a  good  detective,  should  leave  nothing  out 
of  consideration. 


In  19 14  we  were  traveling  over  the  moving  ice  pack 
north  of  Alaska.  The  ice  in  that  vicinity  was  composed 
of  islands,  most  of  them  several  miles  in  diameter,  and 
some  of  them  as  much  as  twenty  or  thirty  miles  in  dia- 
meter, although  a  few  were  no  larger  than  a  city  block 
and  others  even  smaller.  Like  real  islands,  these  were 
separated  by  water,  but  they  were  different  from  ordinary 
islands  in  being  in  continual  motion  and  in  bunting  against 
each  other  as  they  moved.  The  motion  was  so  very  slow 
that  it  was  scarcely  perceptible,  and  when  the  islands 
collided,  there  was  no  shock  that  would  knock  you  off 
your  feet  but  merely  a  quiver  and  a  groaning,  grinding 
noise  as  one  island  crushed  and  broke  the  edges  of  an- 
other. The  ice  that  made  up  the  islands  was  of  varying 
thickness,  in  few  places  less  than  three  or  four  feet,  and 
in  many  places  as  much  as  fifty  or  a  hundred  feet.  The 
fifty  or  hundred-foot  ice  is  not  produced  by  continuous 
freezing,  as  in  a  lake,  but  rather  by  having  thinner  ice 
broken  up  and  one  cake  heaped  upon  another  until  they 
are  piled  ten,  fifteen  or  twenty  layers  deep.  The  differ- 
ent ice  pieces  later  freeze  together,  making  solid  masses  of 
great  thickness. 

Traveling  over  such  ice  we  usually  found  a  place  where 
the  corner  of  one  island  touched  the  corner  of  another, 
giving  us  a  chance  to  cross  over.  But  in  one  place  we 
found  that  our  island  was  not  touching  any  other  ice 
ahead  of  us.  The  water  lane  between  us  and  the  next 
island  was  only  a  dozen  or  two  yards  across  and  seemed  to 


292        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

us  to  be  getting  narrower.  We  decided,  accordingly,  to 
stop  and  wait  to  see  what  would  happen.  We  could  have 
rigged  up  a  device  we  called  a  sled  boat  for  ferrying  our 
party  across,  but  this  would  have  been  a  lot  of  bother 
and  did  not  seem  necessary,  for  the  prospect  was  that  in 
a  few  hours  the  ice  masses  would  come  together  and  we 
could  then  keep  on  our  journey.  Expecting  only  a  short 
wait,  we  did  not  unhitch  our  dogs  and  everything  was  in 
readiness  to  start  whenever  a  crossing  became  possible. 

In  the  open  water  that  was  delaying  us  the  seals  were 
numerous.  We  killed  some,  fed  our  dogs,  and  made  a 
great  bonfire  of  blubber  to  boil  a  pot  of  fresh  meat. 

In  the  winter  time  we  keep  our  rifles,  field  glasses  and 
other  similar  things  outdoors  at  all  times.  If  they  were 
taken  into  the  house,  moisture  would  form  on  them  and 
this  would  be  injurious.  In  the  case  of  a  rifle,  it  would 
cause  rust  on  the  inside  of  the  barrel  and  that  is  the 
most  important  part  of  the  rifle.  During  the  winter 
there  is  no  appreciable  rust  so  long  as  the  gun  is  kept 
outdoors,  but  now  spring  was  approaching  and  with  sum- 
mer weather  and  increasing  temperature  there  was  likely 
to  be  rust.  Under  such  conditions,  it  is  my  custom  to  oil 
the  inside  of  the  rifle  barrel  immediately  after  it  has  been 
used.  In  this  case  I  had  not  only  oiled  my  rifle,  but  I 
had  put  it  in  its  case  and  strapped  it  on  top  of  one  of  the 
sleds  to  be  ready  for  the  start. 

We  were  sitting  around  the  campfire  enjoying  our  meal 
of  boiled  seal  meat,  when  the  dogs  all  at  once  commenced 
eat  racket.  From  this  point  I  shall  allow  Burt  Mc- 
Connell  to  tell  the  story.  He  is  now  one  of  the  editors 
of  the  Literary  Digest  but  was  then  the  youngest  mem- 
ber of  my  ice-exploring  party.  He  had  never  before 
seeD  a  polai  bear,  and  so  this  was  a  great  event  for  him. 


HOW  WE  HUNT  POLAR  BEARS  293 

"We  had  been  traveling  with  Stefansson  northward 
over  the  moving  ice  of  the  Arctic  Ocean  in  March  and 
April  of  19 14  when,  on  the  thirteenth  day  out,  we  were 
halted  by  a  narrow  lead  of  open  water.  The  next  morn- 
ing, in  the  hope  that  a  crossing  might  be  found  to  the  west- 
ward, the  Commander  started  out,  followed  by  Storkerson, 
Andreasen,  Johansen,  Crawford  and  myself,  with  the 
sleds  and  dogs.  We  followed  the  edge  of  the  ice  for  an 
hour  or  more,  when  Storkerson  saw  a  seal  suddenly  poke 
its  head  out  of  the  water.  At  about  the  same  time  the 
Commander  found  a  huge  cake  of  ice  adrift  in  the  open 
lead,  which  was  only  about  fifty  feet  wide  at  that  point. 
Here  was  a  ferry  already  built,  so  while  we  were  getting 
the  teams  ready  to  go  aboard  the  ferry  the  Commander 
and  Storkerson  walked  along  the  lead  in  different  direc- 
tions in  search  of  seals  for  dog  food  and  for  our  own 
dinner.  Four  were  shot  in  the  course  of  an  hour,  then 
Storkerson  set  to  work  to  make  out  of  an  empty  tin  can 
a  stove  which  would  burn  seal  blubber. 

"Little  did  we  think  that  the  odor  of  the  burning  seal 
blubber  and  cooking  seal  meat  would  bring  a  polar  bear 
into  our  camp,  but  that  is  just  what  it  did.  We  had 
placed  the  dogs  on  the  ferry,  skinned  a  seal,  made  the 
stove,  built  a  fire  in  it,  and  were  cooking  seal  meat  with 
the  blubber  from  the  same  carcass  for  fuel  when  we  were 
brought  to  our  feet  by  a  great  commotion  among  the  dogs. 
The  Commander  and  Storkerson,  who  were  nearest,  ran 
toward  the  dogs  to  stop  what  they  thought  was  a  fight 
among  them,  and  Crawford  and  I  followed.  I  did  not 
notice  any  special  cause  for  the  commotion  until  Storker- 
son yelled  to  us,  'It's  a  bear!' 

"Knowing  that  our  lives  depended  upon  our  dogs,  and 
that  a  polar  bear  could  kill  one  with  a  single  blow  of  his 


294        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

powerful  paw,  everybody  now  ran  to  the  assistance  of  the 
Commander  and  Storkerson.  There  were  only  two  rifles 
on  the  sleds,  however,  so  there  was  little  that  we  could  do 
except  restrain  the  dogs  from  dragging  the  sleds  into  the 
water,  in  their  eagerness  to  attack  the  bear. 

"The  white,  shaggy  monster  was  only  twenty-five  feet 
from  the  dogs.  Fortunately,  he  was  on  the  opposite  side 
of  the  open  water.  He  did  not  appear  to  be  in  the 
least  afraid  of  the  dogs,  which  were  rearing,  plunging 
and  barking  in  their  eagerness  to  be  at  him.  But  he 
completely  ignored  them,  and  merely  stood  facing  them, 
with  his  head  hanging  downward  and  swinging  slowly 
from  side  to  side.  Then  he  would  peer  into  the  water  for 
a  moment,  as  if  trying  to  make  up  his  mind  to  plunge 
in  and  swim  across. 

"Never  in  his  life,  it  may  safely  be  said,  had  this  bear 
seen  a  dog.  In  fact,  the  only  animals  he  had  seen  were 
foxes  and  seals,  and  he  knew  himself  to  be  master  of 
these.  Perhaps  these  barking  creatures  were  another 
species  of  fox.  Well,  he  would  plunge  in,  swim  across, 
climb  out  on  the  other  side  with  the  aid  of  his  powerful 
forelegs,  and  find  out.  By  this  time  the  Commander  and 
Storkerson  had  arrived  at  the  sleds  which  were  separated 
from  the  bear  by  only  a  few  feet  of  water,  but  the  bear 
gave  no  heed  to  them  or  to  the  dogs,  which  by  this  time 
were  in  a  perfect  frenzy.  He  merely  stood  at  the  very 
edge  of  the  ice,  looking  into  the  water,  swaying  from 
one  side  to  the  other  like  a  polar  bear  in  the  zoo  on  a 
summer  day,  and  swinging  his  ponderous  head. 

"Storkerson  was  the  first  to  reach  his  rifle,  which  was 
lying  loose  on  top  of  the  sled  that  was  farthest  from  the 
bear.  Just  as  it  appeared  that  the  bear  had  made  up  his 
mind  to  swim  over  and  kill  our  dogs,  Storkerson  took 


HOW  WE  HUNT  POLAR  BEARS  295 

aim  quickly  and  fired.  The  bullet,  a  .30-.30,  hit  the 
bear  in  the  right  foreleg,  and  knocked  that  member  from 
under  him,  so  that  he  turned  a  complete  somersault  into 
the  water.  It  was  at  this  juncture  that  I  snapped  a  pic- 
ture, but  it  was  not  a  success.  When  the  bear  came  to 
the  surface  all  thought  of  visiting  us  had  vanished;  his 
only  idea  now  was  to  escape. 

"By  this  time,  however,  the  Commander  had  unstrapped 
his  rifle  case  and  reached  his  rifle,  which  he  had  oiled  and 
put  away  an  hour  before.  The  bear  was  wounded,  and, 
while  it  might  never  menace  our  dogs  again,  it  would  be 
better  to  end  its  misery.  So  the  Commander  fired  with 
his  hard-shooting  Gibbs-Mannlicher  rifle  as  the  now 
thoroughly  frightened  King  of  the  Arctic  clambered  out 
upon  the  ice  and  started  to  limp  away.  This  bullet 
knocked  him  over,  but  he  got  up  again  and  in  spite  of 
a  second  hit  from  Storkerson's  rifle,  he  disappeared  be- 
hind a  pressure  ridge  and  was  lost  to  view,  leaving  a  broad 
trail  of  blood. 

"During  the  excitement,  as  we  now  noticed,  the  lead  had 
narrowed  so  much  that  Crawford  and  I  with  the  .30-.30 
rifle  and  the  camera,  were  able  to  cross  with  the  aid  of  a 
pair  of  skis  and  a  long  pole.  We  followed  the  trail  of 
blood  at  a  run,  expecting  at  every  turn  to  come  upon  the 
wounded  animal,  but  we  had  proceeded  almost  half  a 
mile  before  we  saw  him  staggering  along,  holding  his  right 
foot  clear  of  the  ice.  When  he  realized  that  he  was  being 
followed,  he  plunged  into  the  first  water  he  came  to.  It 
would  be  a  simpler  matter — so  I  thought — for  Crawford 
to  place  a  bullet  in  a  vital  place  when  the  bear  came  to  the 
surface.  Three  hasty  shots  inflicted  only  flesh  wounds, 
however,  and  Crawford  found  that  he  had  no  more  cart- 
ridges.   I  was  about  to  run  back  to  camp  for  more  when 


296        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

the  Commander  appeared,  bringing  his  Mannlicher.  Al- 
though this  rifle  is  of  smaller  caliber — .256 — one  bullet  in 
the  bear's  heart  killed  him  instantly  as  he  clambered  out 
upon  the  ice. 

"In  a  sense,  this  misfortune  to  the  bear  was  his  own 
fault.  The  smell  of  the  burning  seal  blubber  and  cooking 
seal-meat  had  attracted  him  from  five  miles  away,  as  we 
later  learned  by  studying  his  trail.  On  cutting  him  up, 
we  saw  he  had  not  been  hungry.  Had  he  had  the  sense 
to  study  us  from  a  distance  of  a  hundred  yards  or  even 
twenty-five  yards,  we  should  not  have  fired  at  him,  for 
we  had  plenty  of  seal  meat.  But  we  had  seen  him  first 
only  a  few  feet  away  from  our  dogs  and  apparently  hesi- 
tating only  momentarily  before  plunging  in  to  swim  the 
narrow  water  lane  that  separated  him  from  them.  We 
fired  the  first  shot  to  protect  our  dogs,  and  the  others 
merely  to  put  a  wounded  animal  out  of  misery." 

The  last  bear  story  of  this  book  will  be  told  by  Harold 
Noice.  Noice  was  born  in  Kansas  City  but  brought  up 
in  Seattle.  He  was  a  boy  fresh  out  of  high  school  when 
he  went  to  the  Arctic  Ocean  on  the  whaling  ship  Polar 
Bear.  The  summer  of  191 5  we  met  the  Polar  Bear  and 
purchased  her  to  take  the  place  of  a  ship  our  expedition 
had  lost.  Some  of  the  crew  of  the  Polar  Bear  stayed 
with  the  ship  and  joined  our  expedition.  One  of  these 
was  Noice.  He  accompanied  us  on  two  of  our  longest 
sledge  journeys.  He  enjoyed  the  Arctic  so  much  that 
when  we  sailed  south  in  19 18  he  asked  to  be  allowed  to 
remain  behind,  and  spent  four  more  years  there  studying 
the  Eskimos  of  Coronation  Gulf — till  the  fall  of  192 1. 
The  story  he  tells  here  happened  the  spring  of  19 16  when 
we  had  discovered  Meighen  Island  and  were  on  our  way 


HOW  WE  HUNT  POLAR  BEARS  297 

back  south  to  the  base  camp  of  our  expedition  in  Banks 
Island.  The  spot  where  the  story  happened  was  on  the 
sea  ice  twenty  or  thirty  miles  away  from  land  and  about 
seven  hundred  miles  north  of  the  arctic  circle. 

"Of  all  my  hunting  experiences  extending  over  a  period 
of  six  and  a  half  years  spent  within  the  arctic  circle,  th« 
most  exciting  was  an  encounter  with  a  polar  bear.  Out- 
side of  parks  and  zoological  gardens,  it  was  the  first  I  had 
ever  seen  at  close  range.  The  incident  happened  on  one 
of  my  journeys  with  Stefansson.  We  had  discovered  new 
land  in  Latitude  80  CN.,  Longitude  100  °W.,  and  were 
returning  over  the  ice  to  our  base  camp  some  four  hun- 
dred and  fifty  miles  to  the  southward. 

"One  night  just  after  we  had  pitched  our  tent  fifteen 
yards  from  an  open  lead  and  after  the  Commander  and  I 
had  gone  inside,  Charlie  Andersen,  the  third  member  of 
our  party,  was  about  to  follow  us  when  he  noticed  some- 
thing white  moving  in  the  water  of  the  lead  about  two 
hundred  yards  from  our  tent.  He  thought  at  first  that 
it  was  a  piece  of  drifting  ice ;  but  when  it  began  to  move 
too  rapidly  for  that,  he  picked  up  his  binoculars  to  see 
what  it  really  was.  As  he  was  focusing  them  upon  the 
object  it  disappeared  beneath  the  surface  of  the  water, 
reappearing  a  little  nearer  to  our  camp.  Charlie  now  saw 
that  it  was  no  chunk  of  ice  but  the  head  of  a  swimming 
polar  bear. 

"When  Charlie  called  to  us  that  a  bear  was  swimming  in 
the  lead  about  two  hundred  yards  away,  I  rushed  out 
instantly.  But  the  Commander  was  used  to  polar  bears 
and  did  not  get  so  excited.  He  put  on  his  boots  in  a 
leisurely  way  before  coining  out  and  then  stationed  him- 


298        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

self  at  the  stern  of  our  sled,  telling  me  to  take  up  my 
position  at  the  bow. 

"The  sled  was  broadside  to  the  lead.  Charlie  stood 
behind  us  where  the  dogs  were  tied,  ready  to  quell  any 
disturbance  they  might  make  when  they  caught  sight  of 
the  bear. 

"We  waited  patiently  for  the  bear  to  come  opposite.  It 
is  difficult  to  drag  a  heavy  bear  out  of  the  water  after  he 
is  shot,  so  we  thought  we  could  wait  until  he  climbed  out 
upon  the  ice  before  shooting  him. 

"Evidently  the  bear  had  seen  the  dogs  sleeping  in  a  row 
on  the  ice  and  had  taken  them  to  be  seals.  For  at  that 
time  of  the  year  seals  like  to  lie  on  top  of  the  ice  beside 
their  holes  or  beside  open  leads,  basking  in  the  warm  sun- 
shine. Polar  bears  make  their  living  by  sneaking  up  to 
these  basking  seals  unawares,  so  it  was  not  strange  he 
should  mistake  the  dogs  for  seals.  The  sled  and  tent 
looming  up  black  against  the  white  background  resembled 
dirty  ice,  but  as  bears  are  used  to  seeing  dirty  ice  he  did 
not  pay  any  particular  attention  to  this. 

"Thinking  no  doubt  that  he  was  soon  to  have  a  feed  of 
fine  fat  seal  meat,  the  bear  took  great  pains  in  stalking 
the  dogs.  He  would  swim  slowly  back  and  forth  across 
the  lead,  occasionally  lifting  his  head  a  little  above  the 
level  of  the  ice  to  see  if  the  (supposed)  seals  had  noticed 
him.  The  dogs  were  tired  from  their  day's  work  and 
were  lying  stretched  out  comfortably  asleep  on  the  ice  and 
suspecting  no  danger. 

"Finally  the  bear  reached  a  spot  nearly  opposite  us. 
Stealthily  he  raised  his  massive  forepaws  upon  the  ice. 
Then  quickly  but  without  a  sound,  he  lifted  himself  out 
of  the  water  and  in  an  instant  this  ferocious  beast  with 
its    wicked    pig-like    eyes    and    yellow-fanged    snarling 


HOW  WE  HUNT  POLAR  BEARS  299 

muzzle,  was  nearly  on  top  of  us.  Stefansson  and  I  were 
crouched  down  behind  the  sled  about  three  yards  apart 
with  only  our  heads  showing.  The  bear  was  headed 
directly  for  Stefansson,  giving  me  a  quartering  view.  He 
was  coming  so  fast  that  he  had  covered  more  than  half 
the  distance  to  us  when  I  fired.  At  the  report  of  my  rifle 
the  bear  rolled  over,  turning  a  somersault  towards  us 
before  he  stopped,  for  he  was  going  so  fast.  Stefansson 
told  me  to  fire  again,  for  our  now  frantically  barking  dogs 
were  in  danger  should  the  wounded  bear  turn  towards 
where  they  were  tied.  I  pulled  on  the  trigger,  but  it 
would  not  budge — my  gun  was  jammed.  The  Com- 
mander then  used  his  Mannlicher-Schoenauer  and 
finished  the  job.  I  found  later  that  sand  had  become 
lodged  under  the  rim  of  my  cartridge  and  had  prevented 
it  from  slipping  all  the  way  into  the  chamber.  The 
Winchester  safety  device  had  therefore  prevented  the 
hammer  from  falling  when  I  pulled  on  the  trigger — other- 
wise the  gun  would  have  back-fired  and  I  might  not  have 
been  able  to  write  this  story. 

"After  the  bear  had  been  killed,  Charlie  started  to 
laugh  at  me  for  getting  'buck-fever'  and  hitting  the  bear 
in  the  leg.  Now  this  was  the  first  bear  I  had  ever  shot 
at,  and  as  our  Commander  had  shot  dozens  during  his 
many  years  of  hunting  in  the  North,  he  had  said  I  might 
kill  this  one.  It  might  seem  you  could  not  miss  so  huge 
an  animal  as  a  bear  coming  almost  straight  at  you,  but 
you  must  remember  I  was  pretty  excited.  The  muzzle 
of  my  gun  was  probably  describing  wobbly  curves  when 
I  was  about  to  fire,  for  my  heart  was  thumping  about 
one  hundred  to  the  minute.  It  was  therefore  largely  a 
matter  of  luck  whether  my  bullet  hit  the  bear's  head  or 
his  feet,  or  missed  him  entirely.     I  knew  this,  but  still 


3oo        HUNTERS  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTH 

I  felt  sure  it  was  I  that  had  brought  the  bear  down,  until 
the  Commander  remarked  that  he  also  had  fired  at  him. 
The  two  guns  had  gone  off  so  nearly  together  that  neither 
Charlie  nor  I  knew  that  he  had  fired. 

"Now  the  question  arose,  Who  killed  the  bear?  He 
had  been  hit  in  the  forepaw  and  also  in  the  shoulder.  As 
I  had  never  shot  at  a  bear,  Charlie  insisted  it  was  my 
bullet  that  had  struck  him  in  the  paw.  But  I  feel  pretty 
strongly  I  could  not  have  missed  that  badly.  The  Com- 
mander improved  things  a  good  deal  by  suggesting  that 
when  an  animal  is  charging  and  when  you  are  low  down, 
its  paws  may  well  be  in  a  straight  line  with  its  heart. 
It  was  even  possible  the  same  bullet  might  have  passed 
through  the  paw  and  later  lodged  in  the  shoulder.  His 
final  verdict  was  that  for  purposes  of  record  it  might  as 
well  be  considered  my  bear — he  had  killed  enough  of 
them  before.  I  like  to  feel  he  missed  that  bear,  but  I 
must  admit  that  (if  so)  it  was  the  only  poor  shot  I  ever 
knew  him  to  make  at  a  charging  polar  bear,  or  indeed  at 
any  animal  he  needed  to  kill.  I  have  since  seen  a  number 
of  polar  bears  but  none  of  them  have  seemed  to  me  so 
large  or  so  ferocious  as  this  one — none  of  them  ever  had 
the  'wicked  pig-like  eyes'  and  'snarling  yellow-fanged 
muzzle'  of  my  first  bear — which,  when  dead,  presented 
an  entirely  different  appearance.  It  turned  out  to  be  a 
rather  small  two-year-old. 

"Since  returning  to  civilization  I  have  heard  some  of 
my  friends  who  hunt  in  Alaska  or  Africa  tell  thrilling  and 
hair-raising  stories  of  their  adventures  with  grizzlies  and 
lions.  I  have  heard  them  describe  the  lion  charging  with 
wide-open  mouth  and  terrifying  roars  into  the  very  arms 
of  the  cool,  level-headed  amateur  hunters.  Perhaps  I 
am  giving  them  less  credit  than  they  deserve  but  I  just 


HOW  WE  HUNT  POLAR  BEARS  301 

can't  help  judging  other  people's  lions  by  my  first  polar 
bear.  Although  I  know  my  friends  to  be  truthful  in 
everyday  matters,  I  usually  take  their  most  thrilling 
stories  with  just  a  grain  of  salt." 


END 


This  map  is  intended  primarily  to  illustrate  the  narrative  of 
Stefansson's  journeys  during  the  time  covered  by  this  book  (1906-7), 
but  an  attempt  is  also  made  to  indicate  graphically  some  of  the 
results  of  his  later  expeditions — those  of  1908-12  and  1913-18. 

The  dotted  land  areas  are  islands  the  existence  of  which  was  not 
previously  known — islands  both  discovered  and  explored.  Heavy 
black  shading  shows  features  previously  known  to  exist  but  where 
Stefansson's  work  has  resulted  in  fundamental  changes  in  the  maps. 
The  barred  areas  at  sea  extend  25  miles  each  way  from  Stefansson's 
routes  on  journeys  where  he  traversed  previously  unexplored  regions 
(on  the  1913-18  expedition). 


1906 
! 


c 


This  map  shows  the  territory  covered  by  the  narrative  of  this  book 
between  July,  1906,  and  September,  1907.  More  than  half  of  the 
country  north  of  the  arctic  circle  is  a  spruce  forest,  but  there  are  ex- 
tensive prairies  along  the  arctic  coast.  The  prairie  is  narrowest  on 
the  eastern  margin  of  the  Mackenzie  delta  (20  or  30  miles  wide)  and 
broadest  near  the  Colville  River  in  Alaska  (150  or  200  miles).  Al- 
though the  map  is  as  correct  as  our  present  knowledge,  there  are 
uncertainties,  and  authorities  differ  on  many  points.  For  the  north 
coast  of  Alaska  we  have  followed  LeffingwelPs  surveys  and  for  the 
Eskimo  Lakes  those  of  Harrison.  These  are  much  the  best  sources 
available. 


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